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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wedding Ring
+       A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those
+       Contemplating Matrimony
+
+Author: T. De Witt Talmage
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2007 [EBook #22343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEDDING RING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Wedding Ring.
+
+A Series of Discourses for Husbands and
+Wives and Those Contemplating
+Matrimony.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+By
+
+T. DE WITT TALMAGE.
+
+
+_Reprinted from THE CHRISTIAN HERALD._
+
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
+LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
+BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1896,
+BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+The Choice of a Wife,                                                5
+
+The Choice of a Husband,                                            24
+
+Clandestine Marriage,                                               42
+
+Duties of Husbands to Wives,                                        60
+
+Duties of Wives to Husbands,                                        78
+
+Costume and Morals,                                                 95
+
+Husbands and Wives,                                                114
+
+Matrimonial Discords,                                              136
+
+Hotels Versus Home,                                                148
+
+Easy Divorce,                                                      166
+
+Maternity,                                                         184
+
+The Children's Patrimony,                                          198
+
+The Mother of All,                                                 217
+
+Sisterly Influence,                                                234
+
+Trials of Housekeeping,                                            252
+
+Woman Enthroned,                                                   268
+
+Old Folks' Visit,                                                  286
+
+Home, Sweet Home,                                                  303
+
+
+
+
+The Wedding Ring.
+
+
+THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.
+
+    "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+    among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+    uncircumcised Philistines?"--JUDGES 14:3.
+
+
+Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to
+marriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in
+asking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with
+her looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the
+hostile families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining, and saturnine
+creature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit
+him forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically
+saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your
+own country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you
+propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of
+lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a
+Philistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no
+pomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy
+brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of
+the uncircumcised Philistines?"
+
+
+BEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.
+
+Excuseless was he for such a choice in a land and amid a race
+celebrated for female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of
+which self-denying Abigail, and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam,
+and pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary, who hugged to her heart
+the blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded
+in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye, the
+gracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only
+typical of the greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise
+excuseless is any man in our time who makes lifelong alliance with any
+one who, because of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or
+intellectual vanity, or _moral twistification_, may be said to be of
+the Philistines.
+
+
+MODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS.
+
+The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such
+splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,
+motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have
+not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not
+only man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is
+the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea,
+during the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened
+for female education, the women of the country are better educated
+than the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality
+at the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have
+difficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make
+appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of
+good womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour
+I entered this life until now, I hope the delusion will last until I
+embark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this
+course of sermons something that seems severe, I am neither cynical
+nor disgruntled.
+
+
+NO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.
+
+There are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every
+home of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women,
+self-sacrificing women, holy women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the
+feet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the
+person of His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and spectacled
+grandmothers Lois, bending over Bibles whose precepts they have
+followed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women
+that are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to
+bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all
+their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except
+those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and
+more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all
+this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some
+of you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of
+you from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my
+text: "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+uncircumcised Philistines?"
+
+
+MARRIAGE NOT FOR ALL.
+
+That marriage is the destination of the human race is a mistake that I
+want to correct before I go further. There are multitudes who never
+will marry, and still greater multitudes who are not fit to marry. In
+Great Britain to-day there are nine hundred and forty-eight thousand
+more women than men, and that, I understand, is about the ratio in
+America. By mathematical and inexorable law, you see, millions of
+women will never marry. The supply for matrimony is greater than the
+demand, the first lesson of which is that every woman ought to prepare
+to take care of herself if need be. Then there are thousands of men
+who have no right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of
+character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman.
+Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so
+that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is
+unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his
+purity. What right have _you, O masculine beast_! whose life has been
+loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in
+the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a
+dove?
+
+
+THE FIRST STEP.
+
+But the majority of you will marry, and have a right to marry, and as
+your religious teacher I wish to say to these men, in the choice of a
+wife first of all seek divine direction. About thirty-five years ago,
+when Martin Farquhar Tupper, the English poet, urged men to prayer
+before they decided upon matrimonial association, people laughed. And
+some of them have lived to laugh on the other side of their mouth.
+
+
+EMINENT BLUNDERERS.
+
+The need of divine direction I argue from the fact that so many men,
+and some of them strong and wise, have wrecked their lives at this
+juncture. Witness Samson and this woman of Timnath! Witness
+_Socrates_, pecked of the historical Xantippe! Witness _Job_, whose
+wife had nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses
+of profanity! Witness _Ananias_, a liar, who might perhaps have been
+cured by a truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as
+himself--Sapphira! Witness _John Wesley_, one of the best men that
+ever lived, united to one of the most outrageous and scandalous of
+women, who sat in City Road Chapel, making mouths at him while he
+preached! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of _John Ruskin_,
+the great art essayist, and _Frederick W. Robertson_, the great
+preacher! Witness a thousand
+
+
+HELLS ON EARTH
+
+kindled by unworthy wives, termagants that scold like a March
+north-easter; female spendthrifts, that put their husbands into
+fraudulent schemes to get money enough to meet the lavishment of
+domestic expenditure; _opium-using women_--about four hundred thousand
+of them in the United States--who will have the drug, though it should
+cause the eternal damnation of the whole household; heartless and
+overbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet
+married--married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build
+the low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't
+stand it at home. On this sea of matrimony, where so many have been
+wrecked, am I not right in advising divine pilotage?
+
+
+NUMEROUS PITFALLS.
+
+Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that
+society is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom
+they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the
+dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster,
+and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their
+work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological
+hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he
+offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands.
+They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are
+so different from the sample by which they bargained. They were simply
+swindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's
+Evangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for Martha Washington.
+
+Aye, as the Indian, chief boasts, of the scalps he has taken, so
+there are in society to-day many coquettes who boast of the masculine
+hearts they have captured. And these women, though they may live amid
+richest upholstery, are not so honorable as the cyprians of the
+street, for these advertise their infamy, while the former profess
+heaven while they mean hell.
+
+There is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad it is no wonder that
+some cannot tell the genuine coin from the base. Do you not realize
+you need divine guidance when I remind you that mistake is possible in
+this important affair, and, if made, is irrevocable?
+
+
+A MISTAKE IRREPARABLE.
+
+The worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You
+see, it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the
+more galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, and in
+your presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you on
+the opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were
+united, might take the ring off of the finger, might rend the
+wedding-veil asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from the family
+Bible record, but all that would fail to unmarry you. It is better not
+to make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men and women
+do not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and how
+are you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? There is only one Being
+in the universe who can tell you whom to choose, and that is the Lord
+of Paradise. He made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each
+other. Adam had not a large group of women from whom to select his
+wife, but it is fortunate, judging from some mistakes which she
+afterward made, that it was Eve or nothing.
+
+There is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly
+as Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was
+made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his
+twenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely
+upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three
+possibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate
+of Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth,
+whose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson,
+the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing
+and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to
+the audience and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to
+be married to this woman;" by the fate of Bulwer, the novelist, whose
+wife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful
+house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the
+dozen dogs whom she entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton,
+who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called
+her a rose, the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be
+so, for I feel the thorns daily;" by the fate of an Englishman whose
+wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the
+sea; by the fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose wife threw a
+cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment--by
+all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you
+to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial
+state, which decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two
+hells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell
+hereafter.
+
+
+NOBLE WIVES.
+
+By the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her husband was pleading in
+court, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression
+he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from
+prison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be
+injurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one
+of the bookcases; by the good fortune of Roland, in Louis' time,
+whose wife translated and composed for her husband, while Secretary of
+the Interior--talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the
+happiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable
+of being prime counsellor and companion in brightness and in
+grief--pray to Almighty God, morning, noon, and night that at the
+right time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest,
+loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not sent to you, that you may
+be sent to her.
+
+
+AVOID MATCHMAKERS.
+
+At this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance
+be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every
+community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These
+brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious
+innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis,
+and that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human
+being, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who
+is ignorant of the future, give such direction as you require at such
+a crisis?
+
+Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine
+guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon,
+whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was
+multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great
+wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud
+tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he
+retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment.
+And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a
+mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering.
+And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is better to dwell in the
+corner of the housetop than with _a brawling woman_ in a wide house."
+And one day during the rainy season the water leaked through the roof
+of the palace and began to drop in a pail or pan set there to catch
+it. And at one side of him all day long the water went drop! drop!
+drop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about
+this, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words
+falling on his ear in ceaseless pelting--drop! drop! drop! and he
+seized his pen and wrote: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day
+and _a contentious woman_ are alike." If Solomon had been as prayerful
+at the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how much domestic
+infelicity he would have avoided!
+
+But prayer about this will amount to nothing unless you pray soon
+enough. Wait until you are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul
+is disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will
+answer your own prayers, and you will mistake your own infatuation for
+the voice of God.
+
+
+AVOID SCOFFERS.
+
+If you have this prayerful spirit you will surely avoid all female
+scoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of
+them in all communities. It must be told that, though the only
+influence that keeps woman from being estimated and treated as a
+slave--aye, as a brute and a beast of burden--is Christianity, since
+where it is not dominant she is so treated, yet there are women who
+will so far forget themselves and forget their God that they will go
+and hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most sacred
+things of the soul. A good woman, over-persuaded by her husband, may
+go once to hear such a tirade against the Christian religion, not
+fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice.
+
+A woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of religion, said to me: "I
+was persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecturer once,
+but going home, I said to him: 'My dear husband, I would not go again
+though my declinature should result in our divorcement forever.'" And
+the woman was right. If after all that Christ and Christianity have
+done for a woman, she can go again and again to hear such assaults,
+she is _an awful creature_, and you had better not come near such a
+reeking lepress. She needs to be washed, and for three weeks to be
+soaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year, fumigated, before she
+is fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a
+Christian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian
+religion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in
+a life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.
+
+
+TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.
+
+What you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine,
+not a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping
+gadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as
+to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul,
+one that cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep.
+There will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will
+both want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you!
+When your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in
+heaven, and not charge upon you with a bitter, "I told you so." As
+far as I can analyze it, _sincerity and earnestness_ are the
+foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to
+get that, and you get nothing but what you will wish you never had
+got.
+
+
+BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.
+
+Don't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his
+eye settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine
+wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice
+except a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of
+the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God
+gives it He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the
+good _Princess of Wales_ dismounted from the railtrain last summer,
+and I saw her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the
+day before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now
+the wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the
+Princess passed through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and
+those who could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their
+stupor, would get up on their elbows to look at her, and wan and
+wasted lips prayed an audible prayer: "God bless the Princess of
+Wales! Doesn't she look beautiful?"
+
+But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!
+Explosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a
+scoundrel with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive
+his chariot wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts
+and gullies. But there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,
+whom a rough and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and though
+their features may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy,
+yet they have graces of soul that will keep them attractive for time
+and glorious through all eternity.
+
+There are two or three circumstances in which the plainest wife is a
+queen of beauty to her husband, whatever her stature or profile. By
+financial panic or betrayal of business partner, the man goes down,
+and returning to his home that evening he says: "_I am ruined_; I am
+in disgrace forever; I care not whether I live or die." It is an
+agitated story he is telling in the household that winter night. He
+says: "The furniture must go, the house must go, the social position
+must go," and from being sought for obsequiously they must be
+cold-shouldered everywhere. After he ceases talking, and the wife has
+heard all in silence, she says: "Is that all? Why, you had nothing
+when I married you, and you have only come back to where you started.
+If you think that my happiness and that of the children depend on
+these trappings, you do not know me, though we have lived together
+thirty years. God is not dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not
+suspended payment, and if you don't mind, I don't care a cent. What
+little we need of food and raiment the rest of our lives we can get,
+and I don't propose to sit down and mope and groan. Mary, hand me that
+darning-needle. I declare! I have forgotten to set the rising for
+those cakes!" And while she is busy at it he hears her humming
+Newton's old hymn, "To-Morrow:"
+
+    "It can bring with it nothing
+      But He will bear us through;
+    Who gives the lilies clothing
+      Will clothe His people too;
+    Beneath the spreading heavens
+      No creature but is fed;
+    And He who feeds the ravens
+      Will give His children bread.
+
+    "Though vine nor fig-tree either
+      Their wonted fruit should bear,
+    Though all the fields should wither
+      Nor flocks nor herds be there;
+    Yet God the same abiding,
+      His praise shall tune my voice;
+    For while in Him confiding
+      I cannot but rejoice."
+
+The husband looks up in amazement, and says: "Well, well, you are the
+greatest woman I ever saw. I thought you would faint dead away when I
+told you." And as he looks at her, all the glories of physiognomy in
+the court of Louis XV. on the modern fashion plates are tame as
+compared with the superhuman splendors of that woman's face. Joan of
+Arc, Mary Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the enchantment of the
+court of Charles II., are nowhere.
+
+
+A WIFE'S DEATH.
+
+There is another time when the plainest wife is a queen of beauty to
+her husband. She has done the work of life. She has reared her
+children for God and heaven, and though some of them may be a little
+wild they will yet come back, for God has promised. She is dying, and
+her husband stands by. They think over all the years of their
+companionship, the weddings and the burials, the ups and the downs,
+the successes and the failures. They talk over the goodness of God and
+His faithfulness to children's children. She has no fear about going.
+The Lord has sustained her so many years she would not dare to
+distrust Him now. The lips of both of them tremble as they say
+good-bye and encourage each other about an early meeting in a better
+world. The breath is feebler and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of
+it? Just hold that mirror at the mouth, and see if there is any vapor
+gathering on the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors takes the old
+man by the arm and gently says: "Come, you had better go into the next
+room and rest," he says: "Wait a moment; I must take one more look at
+that face and at those hands!" Beautiful! Beautiful!
+
+My friends, I hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal
+sunset. That is a crystalline river pouring into a crystal sea. That
+is the solo of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus. That is a
+queen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at
+eighty-two, seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your
+father and mother went. I wonder if we shall die as well?
+
+
+
+
+THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.
+
+    "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the
+    house of her husband."--RUTH 1:9.
+
+
+This was the prayer of pious Naomi for Ruth and Orpah, and is an
+appropriate prayer now in behalf of unmarried womanhood. Naomi, the
+good old soul, knew that the devil would take their cases in hand if
+God did not, so she prays: "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest,
+each of you in the house of her husband."
+
+In this series of sermons on "The Wedding Ring" I last Sabbath gave
+prayerful and Christian advice to men in regard to the selection of a
+wife, and to-day I give the same prayerful and Christian advice to
+women in regard to the selection of a husband, but in all these
+sermons saying much that I hope will be appropriate for all ages and
+all classes.
+
+
+VOLUNTARY CELIBACY.
+
+I applaud the celibacy of a multitude of women who, rather than make
+unfit selection, have made none at all. It has not been a lack of
+opportunity for marital contract on their part, but their own culture
+and refinement, and their exalted idea as to what a husband ought to
+be, have caused their declinature. They have seen so many women marry
+imbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or life-time incapables, or
+magnificent nothings, or men who before marriage were angelic and
+afterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and stood back. They
+saw so many boats go into the maelstrom that they steered into other
+waters. Better for a woman to live alone, though she live a thousand
+years, than to be annexed to one of these masculine failures with
+which society is surfeited. The patron saint of almost every family
+circle is some such unmarried woman, and among all the families of
+cousins she moves around, and her coming in each house is the morning,
+and her going away is the night.
+
+
+A BENEFICENT SPINSTERHOOD.
+
+In my large circle of kindred, perhaps twenty families in all, it was
+an Aunt Phoebe. Paul gave a letter of introduction to one whom he
+calls "Phoebe, our sister," as she went up from Cenchrea to Rome,
+commending her for her kindness and Christian service, and imploring
+for her all courtesies. I think Aunt Phoebe was named after her. Was
+there a sickness in any of the households, she was there ready to sit
+up and count out the drops of medicine. Was there a marriage, she
+helped deck the bride for the altar. Was there a new soul incarnated,
+she was there to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement
+she was there to console. The children, rushed out at her first
+appearance, crying, "Here comes Aunt Phoebe," and but for parental
+interference they would have pulled her down with their caresses--for
+she was not very strong, and many severe illnesses had given her
+enough glimpses of the next world to make her heavenly-minded. Her
+table was loaded up with Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Doddridge's "Rise
+and Progress," and Jay's "Morning and Evening Exercises," and John
+Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and like books, which have fitted out
+whole generations for the heaven upon which they have already entered.
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN.
+
+"De Witt," she said to me one day, "twice in my life I have been so
+overwhelmed with the love of God that I fainted away and could hardly
+be resuscitated. Don't tell me there is no heaven. I have seen it
+twice." If you would know how her presence would soothe an anxiety, or
+lift a burden, or cheer a sorrow, or leave a blessing on every room in
+the house, ask any of the Talmages. She had tarried at her early home,
+taking care of an invalid father, until the bloom of life had
+somewhat faded; but she could interest the young folks with some
+three or four tender passages in her own history, so that we all knew
+that it was not through lack of opportunity that she was not the queen
+of one household, instead of being a benediction on a whole circle of
+households.
+
+At about seventy years of age she made her last visit to my house, and
+when she sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her
+presence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I
+had got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole
+alphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went
+out of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in
+heaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest
+gallery! I saw the other day in the village cemetery of Somerville,
+N.J., her resting-place, the tombstone having on it the words which
+thirty years ago she told me she would like to have inscribed there,
+namely: "The Morning Cometh."
+
+
+ILLUSTRIOUS SPINSTERS.
+
+Had she a mission in the world? Certainly. As much as Caroline
+Herschel, first amanuensis for her illustrious brother, and then his
+assistant in astronomical calculations, and then discovering worlds
+for herself, dying at ninety-eight years of age, still busy with the
+stars till she sped beyond them; as much as had Florence Nightingale,
+the nurse of the Crimea; or Grace Darling, the oarswoman of the Long
+Stone Lighthouse; or Mary Lyon, the teacher of Mount Holyoke Female
+Seminary; or Hannah More, the Christian authoress of England; or
+Dorothea Dix, the angel of mercy for the insane; or Anna Etheridge,
+among the wounded of Blackburn's Fort; or Margaret Breckenridge, at
+Vicksburg; or Mary Shelton, distributing roses and grapes and cologne
+in western hospital; or thousands of other glorious women like them,
+who never took the marriage sacrament. Appreciate all this, my sister,
+and it will make you deliberate before you rush out of the single
+state into another, unless you are sure of betterment.
+
+
+A DIFFICULT BUSINESS.
+
+Deliberate and pray. Pray and deliberate. As I showed you in my former
+sermon, a man ought to supplicate Divine guidance in such a crisis;
+how much more important that you solicit it! It is easier for a man to
+find an appropriate wife than for a woman to find a good husband. This
+is a matter of arithmetic, as I showed in former discourse. Statistics
+show that in Massachusetts and New York States women have a majority
+of hundreds of thousands. Why this is we leave others to surmise. It
+would seem that woman is a favorite with the Lord, and that therefore
+He has made more of that kind. From the order of the creation in
+paradise it is evident that woman is an improved edition of man. But
+whatever be the reason for it, the fact is certain that she who
+selects a husband has a smaller number of people to select from than
+he who selects a wife. Therefore a woman ought to be especially
+careful in her choice of life-time companionship. She cannot afford to
+make a mistake. If a man err in his selection he can spend his
+evenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities by tobacco-smoke; but
+woman has no club-room for refuge, and would find it difficult to
+habituate herself to cigars. If a woman make a bad job of marital
+selection, the probability is that nothing but a funeral can relieve
+it. Divorce cases in court may interest the public, but the
+love-letters of a married couple are poor reading, except for those
+who write them. Pray God that you be delivered from irrevocable
+mistake!
+
+
+PARTNERS TO AVOID.
+
+Avoid affiance with a despiser of the Christian religion, whatever
+else he may have or may not have. I do not say he must needs be a
+religious man, for Paul says the unbelieving husband is sanctified by
+the wife; but marriage with a man who hates the Christian religion
+will insure you a life of wretchedness. He will caricature your habit
+of kneeling in prayer. He will speak depreciatingly of Christ. He will
+wound all the most sacred feelings of your soul. He will put your home
+under the anathema of the Lord God Almighty. In addition to the
+anguish with which he will fill your life, there is great danger that
+he will despoil your hope of heaven, and make your marriage relation
+an infinite and eternal disaster. If you have made such engagement,
+your first duty is to break it. My word may come just in time to save
+your soul.
+
+
+HUSBANDS SELDOM REFORM.
+
+Further, do not unite in marriage with a man of bad habits in the idea
+of reforming him. If now, under the restraint of your present
+acquaintance, he will not give up his bad habits, after he has won the
+prize you cannot expect him to do so. You might as well plant a violet
+in the face of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing it. You
+might as well run a schooner alongside of a burning ship with the idea
+of saving the ship. The consequence will be, schooner and ship will be
+destroyed together.
+
+The almshouse could tell the story of a hundred women who married men
+to reform them. If by twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled
+by intoxicants, he is under such headway that your attempt to stop him
+would be very much like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to
+stop a Hudson River express train. What you call an inebriate nowadays
+is not a victim to wine or whiskey, but to logwood and strychnine and
+nux vomica. All these poisons have kindled their fires in his tongue
+and brain, and all the tears of a wife weeping cannot extinguish the
+flames. Instead of marrying a man to reform him, let him reform first,
+and then give him time to see whether the reform is to be permanent.
+Let him understand that if he cannot do without his bad habits for two
+years he must do without you forever.
+
+
+MEN WEDDED TO THE WORLD.
+
+Avoid union with one supremely selfish, or so wound up in his
+occupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a
+man who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is
+no room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the
+scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made
+to cut his way through life alone, or a file full of roughness, made
+to be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His
+disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so
+married to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other
+bride is a case of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their
+literary work as was Chatterton, whose essay was not printed because
+of the death of the Lord Mayor. Chatterton made out the following
+account: "Lost by the Lord Mayor's death in this essay one pound
+eleven shillings and six-pence. Gained in elegies and essays five
+pounds and five shillings." Then he put what he had gained by the Lord
+Mayor's death opposite to what he had lost, and wrote under it: "And
+glad he is dead by three pounds thirteen shillings and six-pence."
+When a man is as hopelessly literary as that he ought to be a
+perpetual celibate; his library, his laboratory, his books are all the
+companionship needed.
+
+Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not
+patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole,
+Gibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would
+have helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,
+and given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's
+overtasked brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and
+Gibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean Swift did not deserve a
+wife, from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,
+and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all "Vanessa." The great wit
+of the day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties.
+
+
+PREDESTINATION IN MARRIAGE.
+
+Amid so many possibilities of fatal mistake, am I not right in urging
+you to seek the unerring wisdom of God, and before you are infatuated?
+Because most marriages are fit to be made convinces us that they are
+divinely arranged. Almost every cradle has an affinity toward some
+other cradle. They may be on the opposite sides of the earth, but one
+child gets out of this cradle, and another child gets out of that
+cradle, and with their first steps they start for each other. They may
+diverge from the straight path, going toward the North, or South, or
+East, or West. They may fall down, but the two rise facing each other.
+They are approaching all through infancy. The one all through the
+years of boyhood is going to meet the one who is coming through all
+the years of girlhood to meet him. The decision of parents as to what
+is best concerning them, and the changes of fortune, may for a time
+seem to arrest
+
+
+THE TWO JOURNEYS;
+
+but on they go. They may never have seen each other. But the two
+pilgrims who started at the two cradles are nearing. After eighteen,
+twenty, or thirty years, the two come within sight. At the first
+glance they may feel a dislike, and they may slacken their step; yet
+something that the world calls fate, and that religion calls
+Providence, urges them on and on. They must meet. They come near
+enough to join hands in social acquaintance, after awhile to join
+hands in friendship, after awhile to join hearts. The delegate from
+the one cradle comes up the east aisle of the church with her father.
+The delegate from the other cradle comes up the west aisle of the
+church. The two long journeys end at the snow-drift of the bridal
+veil. The two chains made out of many years are forged together by the
+golden link which the groom puts upon the third finger of the left
+hand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!
+
+But there are so many exceptions to the general rule of natural
+affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead
+them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are
+thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women
+leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle
+than that in America--women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of
+a living husband.
+
+
+THE ADVERTISING BRUTE.
+
+Avoid all proposed alliances through newspaper advertisements. Many
+women, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been
+led on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who
+write such advertisements are villains and lepers--all, without a
+single exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will
+tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage
+at a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.
+Put your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion, to see if he will bite.
+Take a glassful of Paris green mixed with some delightful henbane.
+These are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper
+advertisements for a wife.
+
+
+MARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.
+
+My advice is: Marry a man who is a fortune in himself. Houses, lands,
+and large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns
+so rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years may
+be gone. There are some things, however, that are a perpetual
+fortune--good manners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence,
+sympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole-heartedness.
+Marry such a one and you have married a fortune, whether he have an
+income now of $50,000 a year or an income of $1000. A bank is secure
+according to its capital stock, and not to be judged by the deposits
+for a day or a week. A man is rich according to his sterling
+qualities, and not according to the mutability of circumstances, which
+may leave with him a large amount of resources to-day and withdraw
+them to-morrow. If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor indeed.
+If a man have upright character he is rich. Property may come and go,
+he is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy him out, nothing can
+sell him out. He may have more money one year than another, but his
+better fortunes never vacillate.
+
+
+AVOID PERFECT MEN.
+
+Yet do not expect to find a perfect man. If you find one without any
+faults, incapable of mistakes, never having guessed wrongly, his
+patience never having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in temper,
+in habits, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle.
+What would you do with a perfect man who are not perfect yourself? And
+how dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural
+excellence? What a companion you would make for an angel! In other
+words, there are no perfect men. There never was but one perfect pair,
+and they slipped down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally
+find a man who says he never sins. _We know he lies_ when he says it.
+We have had financial dealings with two or three perfect men, and they
+cheated us wofully. Do not, therefore, look for an immaculate husband,
+for you will not find him.
+
+
+PLENTY OF GOOD HUSBANDS.
+
+But do not become cynical on this subject. Society has a great
+multitude of grand men who know how to make home happy. When they come
+to be husbands they evince a nobility of nature and a self-sacrificing
+spirit that surprise even the wife. These are the men who cheerfully
+sit in dark and dirty business offices, ten feet by twelve, in summer
+time hard at work while the wives and daughters are off at Saratoga,
+Mount Desert, or the White Sulphur. These are the men who, never
+having had much education themselves, have their sons at Yale, and
+Harvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work
+themselves to death by fifty years of age, and go out to Greenwood
+leaving large estate and generous life-insurance provision for their
+families.
+
+There are husbands and fathers here by the hundreds who would die for
+their households. If outlawry should ever become dominant in our
+cities they would stand in their doorway, and with their own arm would
+cleave down, one by one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot,
+and every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an army in defence
+in a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is
+not so much the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and
+children, and home that turns enthusiasm into a fury. The world has
+such men by the million, and the homunculi that infest all our
+communities must not hinder women from appreciating the glory of true
+manhood.
+
+
+FIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.
+
+I was reading of a bridal reception. The young man had brought home
+the choice of his heart in her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she
+stood in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group, the young man's
+eyes filled with tears of joy as he thought that she was his. Years
+passed by, and they stood at the same parlor on another festal
+occasion. She wore the same dress, for business had not opened as
+brightly to the young husband as he expected, and he had never been
+able to purchase for her another dress. Her face was not as bright and
+smooth as it had been years before, and a careworn look had made its
+signature on her countenance. As the husband looked at her he saw the
+difference between this occasion and the former, and he went over to
+where she sat, and said: "You remember the time when we were here
+before. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat
+changed, but you look to me far more beautiful than you did then."
+There is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and many of you know it in
+your own homes.
+
+But, after all the good advice we may give you, we come back to the
+golden pillar from which we started, the tremendous truth that no one
+but God can guide you in safety about this matter that may decide your
+happiness for two worlds, this and the next. So, my sister, I put your
+case where Naomi put that of Ruth and Orpah when she said: "The Lord
+grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her
+husband."
+
+
+THE WEDDING.
+
+I imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There
+is much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an
+undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the
+gladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives,
+but when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is
+preparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its
+wings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and
+at the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you
+think it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with
+brightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To
+have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood
+to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an
+anxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and
+then have her go away to some other home--aye, all the redolence of
+orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the
+rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious
+congratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are
+suffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you
+have a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or
+thirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and,
+suppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, "Good-bye."
+
+
+VISIT THE OLD HOME.
+
+I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write
+often home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose
+their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and
+stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place
+after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on
+father's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you
+will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day
+one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile
+the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to
+yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are
+faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the
+first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted
+than you ever can be to any one else except to God--I mean your father
+and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:
+
+    "Me let the tender office long engage
+    To rock the cradle of reposing age;
+    With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
+    Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
+    Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
+    And keep awhile one parent from the sky."
+
+And now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood
+before me to-day to the God "who setteth the solitary in families."
+
+
+
+
+CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.
+
+    "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
+    But he knoweth not that the dead are there."--PROVERBS 9:17, 18.
+
+
+The Garden of Eden was a great orchard of fruit-bearing trees, bushels
+and bushels of round, ripe, glorious fruit; but the horticulturist and
+his wife having it in charge hankered for one special tree, simply
+because it was forbidden, starting a bad streak in human nature, so
+that children will now sometimes do something simply because they are
+forbidden to do it. This
+
+
+KINK IN THE HUMAN RACE
+
+is not easily unsnarled. Tell a company that they may look into any
+twenty rooms of a large house except one, and their chief desire is to
+see that one, though all the others were picture-galleries and that a
+garret. If there were in a region of mineral springs twenty fountains,
+but the proprietor had fenced in one well against the public, the one
+fenced in would be the chief temptation to the visitors, and they
+would rather taste of that than of the other nineteen. Solomon
+recognized this principle in the text, and also the disaster that
+follows forbidden conduct, when he said: "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."
+
+In this course of sermons on "The Wedding Ring," I this morning aim a
+point-blank shot at "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades."
+
+Yonder comes up through the narrows of New York harbor a ship having
+all the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to
+the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted
+off; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and
+lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken;
+all the pumps working to keep from sinking before they can get to
+wharfage. That ship is the institution of Christian marriage, launched
+by the Lord grandly from the banks of the Euphrates, and floating out
+on the seas for the admiration and happiness of all nations. But
+free-loveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from
+another side, and hurricanes of libertinism have struck it on all
+sides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank, and beam, and
+sail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and stanchion. In other words,
+the notions of modern society must be reconstructed on the subject of
+the marriage institution. And when we have got it back somewhere near
+what it was when God built it in Paradise, the earth will be far on
+toward resumption of Paradisaical conditions.
+
+
+DEPLORABLE LAXITY.
+
+Do you ask what is the need of a course of sermons on this subject?
+The man or woman who asks this question is either ignorant or guilty.
+In New England, which has been considered by many the most moral part
+of the United States, there are two thousand divorces per year. And in
+Massachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits, there is one divorce
+to every fourteen marriages. The State of Maine, considered by many
+almost frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred and
+seventy-eight divorces. In Vermont _swapping wives_ is not a rare
+transaction. In Connecticut there are women who boast that they have
+four or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted Protestantism
+is, on this subject, more lax than Roman Catholicism. Roman
+Catholicism admits of no divorce except for the reason that Christ
+admitted as a lawful reason. But Protestantism is admitting anything
+and everything, and the larger the proportion of Protestants in any
+part of the country, the larger the ratio of divorce. Do you not then
+think that Protestantism needs some toning up on this subject?
+
+
+GROWING POPULARITY.
+
+Aye, when you realize that the sacred and divine institution is being
+caricatured and defamed by clandestine marriages and escapades all
+over the land, does there not seem a call for such discussion? Hardly
+a morning or evening paper comes into your possession without
+reporting them, and there are fifty of these occurrences where one is
+reported, because it is the interest of all parties to hush them up.
+The victims are, all hours of the night, climbing down ladders or
+crossing over from State to State, that they may reach laws of greater
+laxity, holding reception six months after marriage to let the public
+know for the first time that a half year before they were united in
+wedlock. Ministers of religion, and justices of the peace, and mayors
+of cities, willingly joining in marriage runaways from other States
+and neighborhoods; the coach-box and the back seat of the princely
+landau in flirtation; telegrams flashing across the country for the
+arrest of absconded school misses, who started off with arm full of
+books, and taking rail trains to meet their affianced--in the
+snow-drifts of the great storm that has recently passed over the
+country some of them, I read, have perished--thousands of people in a
+marriage whose banns have never been published; precipitated
+conjugality; bigamy triumphant; marriage a joke; society blotched all
+over with a putrefaction on this subject which no one but the Almighty
+God can arrest.
+
+We admit that clandestinity and escapade are sometimes authorized and
+made right by parental tyranny or domestic serfdom. There have been
+exceptional cases where parents have had a monomania in regard to
+their sons and daughters, demanding their celibacy or forbidding
+relations every way right. Through absurd family ambition parents have
+sometimes demanded qualifications and equipment of fortune
+unreasonable to expect or simply impossible. Children are not expected
+to marry to please their parents, but to please themselves. Given good
+morals, means of a livelihood, appropriate age and quality of social
+position, and no parent has a right to prohibit a union that seems
+deliberate and a matter of the heart. Rev. Philip Henry, eminent for
+piety and good sense, used to say to his children: "Please God and
+please yourselves, and you shall never displease me."
+
+
+A MATRIMONIAL TRAGEDY.
+
+During our Civil War a marriage was about to be celebrated at
+Charleston, S.C., between Lieutenant de Rochelle and Miss Anna, the
+daughter of ex-Governor Pickens. As the ceremony was about to be
+solemnized a shell broke through the roof and wounded nine of the
+guests, and the bride fell dying, and, wrapped in her white wedding
+robe, her betrothed kneeling at her side, in two hours she expired.
+And there has been many as bright a union of hearts as that proposed
+that the bombshell of outrageous parental indignation has wounded and
+scattered and slain.
+
+If the hand offered in marriage be blotched of intemperance; if the
+life of the marital candidate has been debauched; if he has no visible
+means of support, and poverty and abandonment seem only a little way
+ahead; if the twain seem entirely unmatched in disposition, protest
+and forbid, and re-enforce your opinion by that of others, and put all
+lawful obstacles in the way; but do not join that company of parents
+who have ruined their children by a plutocracy of domestic crankiness
+which has caused more than one elopement. I know of a few cases where
+marriage has been under the red-hot anathema of parents and all the
+neighbors, but God approved, and the homes established have been
+beautiful and positively Edenic.
+
+But while we have admitted there are real cases of justifiable
+rebellion, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--yea, in nine hundred
+and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, these unlicensed departures
+and decampments by moonlight are ruin, temporal and eternal. It is
+safer for a woman to jump off the docks of the East River and depend
+on being able to swim to the other shore, or get picked up by a
+ferry-boat. The possibilities are that she may be rescued, but the
+probability is that she will not. Read the story of the escapades in
+the newspapers for the last ten years, and find me a half dozen that
+do not mean poverty, disgrace, abandonment, police court, divorce,
+death, and hell. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret
+is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there." Satan
+presides over the escapade. He introduces the two parties to each
+other. He gets them to pledge their troth. He appoints where they
+shall meet. He shows them where they can find officiating minister or
+squire. He points out to them the ticket office for the rail train. He
+puts them aboard, and when they are going at forty miles the hour he
+jumps off and leaves them in the lurch; for, while Satan has a genius
+in getting people into trouble, he has no genius for getting people
+out. He induced Jonah to take ship for Tarshish when God told him to
+go to Nineveh, but provided for the recreant prophet no better
+landing-place than the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
+
+
+THE DIME NOVEL.
+
+The modern novel is responsible for many of these abscondings. Do you
+think that young women would sit up half a night reading novels in
+which the hero and heroine get acquainted in the usual way, and carry
+on their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents,
+the day of marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding group of
+kindred the vows are taken? Oh, no! There must be flight, and pursuit,
+and narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine, and
+parental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and gorgeous. In many of the
+cases of escapade the idea was implanted in the hot brain of the woman
+by a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.
+
+
+THE SCHEME OF BAD MEN.
+
+These evasions of the ordinary modes of marriage are to be deplored
+for the reason that nearly all of them are proposed by bad men. If the
+man behave well he has a character to which he can refer, and he can
+say: "If you want to inquire about me there is a list of names of
+people in the town or neighborhood where I live." No; the heroes of
+escapades are nearly all either bigamists, or libertines, or
+drunkards, or defrauders, or first-class scoundrels of some sort. They
+have no character to lose. They may be dressed in the height of
+fashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and padded, and
+diamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye
+and intoxicate the olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts
+of villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of them. "Stolen waters
+are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not
+that the dead are there."
+
+
+SOCIAL DEGRADATION.
+
+Fugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies
+woman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was
+not of a higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there would be
+no objections, and hence no inducement to clandestinity. In almost all
+cases it means the lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a man
+marrying a woman beneath him in society may raise her to any eminence
+that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in
+society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable,
+and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can
+afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the
+American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an
+instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an
+affluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five
+dollars a day, provided he keeps very busy. Well, many a man has
+lived on five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big
+contract when with five dollars a day he attempts to support some one
+who has lived in a home that cost twenty thousand per annum. This has
+been about the history of most of such conjunctions of simplicity and
+extravagance, the marriage of
+
+
+OX AND EAGLE.
+
+The first year they get on tolerably well, for it is odd and romantic,
+and assisted by applause of people who admire outlawry. The second
+year the couple settle down into complete dislike of each other. The
+third year they separate and seek for divorce, or, as is more
+probable, the man becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened waif
+of the street. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is
+pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there."
+
+These truant marriages are also to be deplored because in most
+instances they are executed in defiance of parental wisdom and
+kindness. Most parents are anxious for the best welfare of a child. If
+they make vehement and determined opposition, it is largely because it
+is a match unfit to be made, and they can see for their daughter
+nothing but wretchedness in that direction. They have keener and wiser
+appreciation, for instance, of the certain domestic demolition that
+comes from alcoholism in a young man. They realize what an idiot a
+woman is who marries a man who has not brains or industry enough to
+earn a livelihood for a family. No bureau of statistics can tell us
+the number of women who, after marriage, have to support themselves
+and their husbands. If the husband becomes invalid, it is a beautiful
+thing to see a wife uncomplainingly, by needle, or pen, or yard-stick,
+or washing-machine, support the home. But these great, lazy masculine
+louts that stand around with hands in their pockets, allowing the wife
+with her weak arm to fight the battle of bread, need to be
+regurgitated from society.
+
+
+REVERSED RELATIONS.
+
+There are innumerable instances in these cities where the wife pays
+the rent, and meets all the family expenses, and furnishes the tobacco
+and the beer for the lord of the household. No wonder parents put on
+all the brakes to stop such a train of disaster. They have too often
+seen the gold ring put on the finger at the altar turning out to be
+the iron link of a chain of domestic servitude. What a farce it is for
+a man who cannot support himself, and not worth a cent in the world,
+to take a ring which he purchased by money stolen from his
+grandmother's cupboard, and put it on the finger of the bride, saying:
+"With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
+endow."
+
+It is amazing to see how some women will marry men knowing nothing
+about them. No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods
+on credit without knowing whether the customer was worthy of being
+trusted. No man or woman would buy a house with encumbrances of
+mortgages, and liens, and judgments against it uncancelled; and yet
+there is not an hour of the day or night for the last ten years there
+have not been women by hasty marriage entrusting their earthly
+happiness to men about whose honesty they know nothing, or who are
+encumbered with liens, and judgments, and first mortgages, and second
+mortgages, and third mortgages of evil habits. No wonder that in such
+circumstances parents in conjugating the verb in question pass from
+the subjunctive mood to the indicative, and from the indicative to the
+imperative. In nearly all the cases of escapade that you will hear of
+the rest of your lives there will be a headlong leap over the barriers
+of parental common sense and forethought. "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."
+
+
+INVOLVES DECEPTION.
+
+We also deplore these fraudulent espousals and this sneaking exchange
+of single life for married life because it is deception, and that is a
+corroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must
+deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot
+deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures
+ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be
+decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto,
+change! Now you see her, and now you don't."
+
+Better to wait for years for circumstances to improve. Time may remove
+all obstacles. The candidate for marital preferences may change his
+habits, or get into some trade or business that will support a home,
+or the inexorable father and mother may be promoted to celestial
+citizenship. At the right time have the day appointed. Stand at the
+end of the best room in the house with joined hands, and minister of
+religion before you to challenge the world that "if they know of any
+reason why these two persons shall not be united, they state it now or
+forever hold their peace," and then start out with the good wishes of
+all the neighbors and the halo of the Divine sanction. When you can go
+out of harbor at noon with all flags flying, do not try to run a
+blockade at midnight.
+
+In view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine
+correspondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine
+meetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of
+mutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters
+come for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no
+correspondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open
+your letters. Do not employ terms of endearment at the beginning and
+close of letters unless you have a right to use them. That young lady
+is on the edge of danger who dares not allow her mother to see her
+letters.
+
+
+CONFIDE IN PARENTS.
+
+If you have sensible parents take them into your confidence in all the
+affairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour
+than you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have
+toiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your
+best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their
+opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition
+is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim,
+or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and
+trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister
+of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things.
+One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr.
+Pitt inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his
+daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.
+Pitt said: "Is the young man of respectable family?" "Yes." "Is he
+respectable in himself?" "Yes." "Has he an estimable character?"
+"Yes." "Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition." The advice
+was taken, and a happy married life ensued. Let ministers and officers
+of the law decline officiating at clandestine marriages. When they are
+asked to date a marriage certificate back, as we all are asked, let
+them peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony was in November
+instead of January, or decline to leave the date blank, lest others
+fill out the record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all our
+States, as it has already been in some of the States, making a license
+from officers of the law necessary before we can unite couples, and
+then make it necessary to publish beforehand in the newspapers, as it
+used to be published in the New England churches, so that if there be
+lawful objection it may be presented, not swinging the buoy on the
+rocks after the ship has struck and gone to pieces.
+
+And here it might be well for me to take all the romance out of an
+escapade by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the great Scotch
+poet, where he describes the crazed victim of one of these escapades:
+
+                "... Yet had she many days
+    Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.
+    She lived on alms, and carried in her hand
+    Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring.
+    When any asked the cause she smiled, and said
+    They were her sisters, and would come and watch
+    Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke
+    Of her deceiver, father, mother, home,
+    Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still
+    In lonely places walked, and ever gazed
+    Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;
+    Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,
+    With woe too wide to see beyond, she died."
+
+
+UNDER THE LIGHT.
+
+But now I turn on this subject an intenser light. We have fifteen
+hundred lights in this church, and when by electric touch they are
+kindled in the evening service it is almost startling. But this whole
+subject of "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades" I put under a more
+intense light than that. The headlight of a locomotive is terrible if
+you stand near enough to catch the full glare of it. As it sweeps
+around the "Horseshoe Curve" of the Alleghanies or along the edges of
+the Sierra Nevadas, how far ahead, and how deep down, and how high up
+it flashes, and there is instantaneous revelation of mountain peak and
+wild beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a thousand
+feet tall, or clinging in white terror to the precipices! But more
+intense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous
+is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the
+most hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I
+quote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole
+emphasis on the word "secret." "God shall bring every work into
+judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil."
+
+What a time that will be in which the cover shall be lifted from every
+home and from every heart. The iniquity may have been so sly that it
+escaped all human detection, but it will be as well known on that day
+as the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, unless for Christ's sake it has
+been forgiven. All the fingers of universal condemnation will be
+pointed at it. The archangel of wrath will stand there with uplifted
+thunderbolt ready to strike it. The squeamishness and prudery of
+earthly society, which hardly allowed some sins to be mentioned on
+earth, are past, and the man who was unclean and the woman who was
+impure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns,
+stand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek,
+and hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping
+with fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and
+infernal voices crying, "Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!"
+
+All marital intrigues and all secret iniquities will be published, as
+though all the trumpets spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized
+them, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. Oh, man, recreant to thy
+marriage vow! Oh, woman, in sinful collusion! What, then, will become
+of thy poor soul? The tumbling Alps, and Pyrenees, and Mount
+Washingtons cannot hide thee from the consequences of thy secret sins.
+Better repent of them now, so that they cannot be brought against
+thee. For the chief of sinners there is pardon, if you ask it in time.
+But I leave you to guess what chance there will be for those who on
+earth lived in clandestine relations, when on that day the very Christ
+who had such high appreciation of the marriage relation that He
+compared it to His own relation with the Church, shall appear at the
+door of the great hall of the Last Assize, and all the multitudes of
+earth, and hell, and heaven shall rise up and cry out from the three
+galleries: "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!"
+
+
+
+
+DUTIES OF HUSBANDS TO WIVES.
+
+    "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide: and he
+    lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were
+    coming."--GENESIS 24:63.
+
+
+A bridal pageant on the back of dromedaries! The camel is called the
+ship of the desert. Its swinging motion in the distance is suggestive
+of a vessel rising and falling with the billows. Though awkward, how
+imposing these creatures as they move along, whether in ancient or
+modern times, sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand
+travelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora to Damascus! In my
+text comes a caravan. We notice the noiseless step of the broad foot,
+the velocity of motion, the gay caparison of saddle, and girth, and
+awning, sheltering the riders from the sun, and the hilarity of the
+mounted passengers, and we cry out: "Who are they?" Well, Isaac has
+been praying for a wife, and it is time he had one, for he is forty
+years of age; and his servant, directed by the Lord, has made a
+selection of Rebekah; and, with her companions and maidens, she is on
+her way to her new home, carrying with her the blessing of all her
+friends.
+
+
+THE NUPTIAL MEETING.
+
+Isaac is in the fields, meditating upon his proposed passage from
+celibacy to monogamy. And he sees a speck against the sky, then groups
+of people, and after a while he finds that the grandest earthly
+blessing that ever comes to a man is approaching with this gay
+caravan.
+
+In this my discourse on "The Wedding Ring," having spoken of the
+choice of a lifetime companion, I take it for granted, O man, that
+your marriage was divinely arranged, and that the camels have arrived
+from the right direction and at the right time, bringing the one that
+was intended for your consort--a Rebekah and not a Jezebel. I proceed
+to discuss as to how you ought to treat your wife, and my ambition is
+to tell you more plain truth than you ever heard in any three-quarters
+of an hour in all your life.
+
+
+THE RESPONSIBILITY UNDERTAKEN.
+
+First of all, I charge you realize your responsibility in having taken
+her from the custody and care and homestead in which she was once
+sheltered. What courage you must have had, and what confidence in
+yourself, to say to her practically: "I will be to you more than your
+father and mother, more than all the friends you ever had or ever can
+have! Give up everything and take me. I feel competent to see you
+through life in safety. You are an immortal being, but I am competent
+to defend you and make you happy. However bright and comfortable a
+home you have now, and though in one of the rooms is the arm-chair in
+which you rocked, and in the garret is the cradle in which you were
+hushed and the trundle-bed in which you slept, and in the sitting-room
+are the father and mother who have got wrinkle-faced, and
+stoop-shouldered, and dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you
+will do better to come with me." I am amazed that any of us ever had
+the sublimity of impudence to ask such a transfer from a home assured
+to a home conjectured and unbuilt.
+
+
+A RISKY VOYAGE.
+
+You would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should
+go down to one of the piers on the North River, and at a time when
+there was a great lack of ship captains, and I should, with no
+knowledge of navigation, propose to take a steamer across to Glasgow
+or Havre, and say: "All aboard! Haul in the planks and swing out,"
+and, passing out into the sea, plunge through darkness and storm. If I
+succeeded in getting charge of a ship, it would be one that would
+never be heard of again. But that is the boldness of every man that
+proffers marriage. He says: "I will navigate you through the storms,
+the cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of rocks and
+icebergs. I have no experience and I have no seaport, but all aboard
+for the voyage of a lifetime! I admit that there have been ten
+thousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't hesitate! Tut! Tut!
+There now! Don't cry! Brides must not cry at the wedding."
+
+
+THE WIFE'S TEMERITY.
+
+In response to this the woman, by her action, practically says: "I
+have but one life to live, and I entrust it all to you. My arm is
+weak, but I will depend on the strength of yours. I don't know much of
+the world, but I rely on your wisdom. I put my body, my mind, my soul,
+my time, my eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve. Even my name
+I resign and take yours, though mine is a name that suggests all that
+was honorable in my father, and all that was good in my mother, and
+all that was pleasant in my brothers and sisters. I start with you on
+a journey which shall not part except at the edge of your grave or
+mine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than
+I make, when I take her tremendous words, the pathos of which many
+centuries have not cooled:
+
+Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee;
+for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will
+lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou
+diest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and
+more also, if aught but death part thee and me.' Side by side in life.
+Side by side in the burying-ground. Side by side in heaven. Before God
+and man, and with my immortal soul in the oath, I swear eternal
+fidelity."
+
+
+ENTITLED TO ADMIRATION.
+
+Now, my brother, how ought you to treat her? Unless you are an ingrate
+infinite you will treat her well. You will treat her better than any
+one in the universe except your God. Her name will have in it more
+music than in all that Chopin, or Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her
+eyes, swollen with three weeks of night watching over a child with
+scarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May morning. After the
+last rose petal has dropped out of her cheek, after the last feather
+of the raven's wing has fallen from her hair, after across her
+forehead, and under her eyes, and across her face there are as many
+wrinkles as there are graves over which she has wept, you will be able
+truthfully to say, in the words of Solomon's song: "Behold, thou art
+fair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!" And perhaps she may respond
+appropriately in the words that no one but the matchless Robert Burns
+could ever have found pen or ink, or heart or brain to write:
+
+    "John Anderson, my jo, John,
+      We clamb the hill thegither;
+    And mony a canty day, John,
+      We've had wi' ane anither.
+    Now we maun totter down, John,
+      But hand in hand we'll go;
+    And sleep thegither at the foot,
+      John Anderson, my jo."
+
+If any one assail her good name, you will have hard work to control
+your temper, and if you should strike him down the sin will not be
+unpardonable. By as complete a surrender as the universe ever
+saw--except that of the Son of God for your salvation and mine--she
+has a first mortgage on your body, mind and soul, and the mortgage is
+foreclosed; and you do not more thoroughly own your two eyes or your
+two hands than she owns you. The longer the journey Rebekah makes and
+the greater the risks of her expedition on the back of the camels, the
+more thoroughly is Isaac bound to be kind, and indulgent, and worthy.
+
+
+LOVERS' PROMISES BINDING.
+
+Now, be honest and pay your debts. You promised to make her happy. Are
+you making her happy? You are an honest man in other things, and feel
+the importance of keeping a contract. If you have induced her into a
+conjugal partnership under certain pledges of kindness and valuable
+attention, and then have failed to fulfill your word, you deserve to
+have a suit brought against you for getting goods under false
+pretences, and then you ought to be mulcted in a large amount of
+damages. Review now all the fine, beautiful, complimentary, gracious
+and glorious things you promised her before marriage and reflect
+whether you have kept your faith. Do you say, "Oh, that was all
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke," and that "they all talk that
+way!" Well, let that plan be tried on yourself! Suppose I am
+interested in Western lands, and I fill your mind with roseate
+speculation, and I tell you that a city is already laid out on the
+farm that I propose to sell you, and that a new railroad will run
+close by, and have a depot for easy transportation of the crops, and
+that eight or ten capitalists are going to put up fine residences
+close by, and that the climate is delicious, and that the ground, high
+up, gives no room for malaria, and that every dollar planted will grow
+up into a bush bearing ten or twenty dollars, and my speech glows with
+enthusiasm until you rush off with me to an attorney to have the deed
+drawn, and the money paid down, and the bargain completed. You can
+hardly sleep nights because of the El Dorado, the Elysium, upon which
+you are soon to enter.
+
+
+A WESTERN EDEN.
+
+You give up your home at the East, you bid good-bye to your old
+neighbors, and take the train, and after many days' journey you arrive
+at a quiet depot, from which you take a wagon thirty miles through the
+wilderness, and reach your new place. You see a man seated on a wet
+log, in a swamp, and shaking with the fifteenth attack of chills and
+fever, and ask him who he is. He says: "I am a real estate agent,
+having in charge the property around here." You ask him where the new
+depot is. He tells you that it has not yet been built, but no doubt
+will be if the company get their bill for the track through the next
+legislature. You ask him where the new city is laid out. He says, with
+chattering teeth: "If you will wait till this chill is off, I will
+show it to you on the map I have in my pocket." You ask him where the
+capitalists are going to build their fine houses, and he says:
+"Somewhere along those lowlands out there by those woods, when the
+water has been drained off." That night you sleep in the hut of the
+real estate agent, and though you pray for everybody else, you do not
+pray for me. Being more fortunate than many men who go out in such
+circumstances, you have money enough to get back, and you come to me,
+and out of breath in your indignation, you say: "You have swindled me
+out of everything. What do you mean in deceiving me about that Western
+property?" "Oh," I reply, "that was all right; that was
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke. That's the way they all
+talk!"
+
+But more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who
+by glow of words and personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into
+surroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that
+she exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married
+experience--treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and
+godless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a
+farm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of a lifetime.
+
+
+LOVERS' ATTENTIONS.
+
+My brother, do not get mad at what I say, but honestly compare the
+promises you made, and see whether you have kept them. Some of you
+spent every evening of the week with your betrothed before marriage,
+and since then you spent every evening away, except you have influenza
+or some sickness on account of which the doctor says you must not go
+out. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of
+adulation, and now you think it sounds silly to praise the one who
+ought to be more attractive to you as the years go by, and life grows
+in severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of
+tears--tears over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way some of
+you used to come in the house in the evening, when you were attempting
+the capture of her affections, and the way some of you come into the
+house in the evening now.
+
+
+DON'T BE PREOCCUPIED.
+
+Then what politeness, what distillation of smiles, what graciousness,
+sweet as the peach orchard in blossom week! Now, some of you come in
+and put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say: "Lost money to-day!"
+and you sit down at the table and criticise the way the food is
+cooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch
+up the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in
+that home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic
+autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with
+healthful curiosity, yet they must ask no questions. The wife has had
+enough annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen to fill her
+nerves with nettles and spikes. As you have provided the money for
+food and wardrobe, you feel you have done all required of you. Toward
+the good cheer, and the intelligent improvement, and the moral
+entertainment of that home, which at the longest can last but a few
+years, you are doing nothing. You seem to have no realization of the
+fact that soon these children will be grown up or in their sepulchres,
+and will be far removed from your influence, and that the wife will
+soon end her earthly mission, and that house will be occupied by
+others, and you yourself will be gone.
+
+Gentlemen, fulfill your contracts. Christian marriage is an affectional
+bargain. In heathen lands a man wins his wife by achievements. In some
+countries wives are bought by the payment of so many dollars, as so many
+cattle or sheep. In one country the man gets on a horse and rides down
+where a group of women are standing, and seizes one of them by the hair,
+and lifts her, struggling and resisting, on his horse, and if her
+brothers and friends do not overtake her before she gets to the jungle,
+she is his lawful wife. In another land the masculine candidate for
+marriage is beaten by the club of the one whom he would make his bride.
+If he cries out under the pounding, he is rejected. If he receives the
+blows uncomplainingly, she is his by right. Endurance, and bravery, and
+skill decide the marriage in barbarous lands, but Christian marriage is
+a voluntary bargain, in which you promise protection, support,
+companionship and love.
+
+
+THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT.
+
+Business men have in their fire-proof safes a file of papers
+containing their contracts, and sometimes they take them out and read
+them over to see what the party of the first part and the party of the
+second part really bound themselves to do. Different ministers of
+religion have their own peculiar forms of marriage ceremony; but if
+you have forgotten what you promised at the altar of wedlock, you had
+better buy or borrow an Episcopal Church-Service, which contains the
+substance of all intelligent marriage ceremonies, when it says: "I
+take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day
+forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part,
+according to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my
+troth." Would it not be a good idea to have that printed in tract form
+and widely distributed?
+
+
+NEVER FLIRT.
+
+The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else's wives
+than to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal
+scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to
+pick up some other lady's pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which
+I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men--namely,
+husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own
+wives they bestow upon others. They smile on them coyly and askance,
+and with a manner that seems to say: "I wish I was free from that old
+drudge at home. What an improvement you would be on my present
+surroundings!" And bouquets are sent, and accidental meetings take
+place, and late at night the man comes to his prosaic home, whistling
+and hilarious, and wonders that the wife is jealous. There are
+thousands of men who, while not positively immoral, need radical
+correction of their habits in this direction. It is meanness
+immeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife:
+"You can't help yourself, and I will go where I please, and admire
+whom I please, and I defy your criticism."
+
+Why did you not have that put in the bond, O domestic Shylock? Why did
+you not have it understood before you were pronounced husband and wife
+that she should have only a part of the dividend of your affections;
+that when, as time rolled on and the cares of life had erased some of
+the bright lines from her face, and given unwieldiness to her form,
+you would have the reserved right to pay obeisance to cheeks more
+rubicund, and figure lither and more agile, and as you demanded the
+last pound of patience and endurance on her part you could, with the
+emphasis of an Edwin Forrest or a Macready, have tapped the eccentric
+marriage document and have said: "It's in the bond!" If this modern
+Rebekah had understood beforehand where she was alighting she would
+have ordered the camel drivers to turn the caravan backward toward
+Padan-aram. Flirtation has its origin either in dishonesty or
+licentiousness. The married man who indulges in it is either a fraud
+or a rake. However high up in society such a one may be, and however
+sought after, I would not give a three-cent piece, though it had been
+three times clipped, for the virtue of the masculine flirt.
+
+
+TONE UP.
+
+The most worthy thing for the thousands of married men to do is to go
+home and apologize for past neglects and brighten up their old love.
+Take up the family Bible and read the record of the marriage day. Open
+the drawer of relics in the box inside the drawer containing the
+trinkets of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellow-colored
+letters that were written before you became one. Rehearse the scenes
+of joy and sorrow in which you have mingled. Put all these things as
+fuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fire rekindle the
+extinguished light. It was a blast from hell that blew it out, and a
+gale from heaven will fan it into a blaze.
+
+Ye who have broken marriage vows, speak out! take your wife into all
+your plans, your successes, your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her
+everything. Walk arm in arm with her into places of amusement, and on
+the piazza of summer watering places, and up the rugged way of life,
+and down through dark ravine, and when one trembles on the way let the
+other be re-enforcement. In no case pass yourself off as a single man,
+practicing gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of age, in
+ladies' society, try to look young-mannish.
+
+
+RESPECT HER PIETY.
+
+Interfere not with your wife's religious nature. Put her not in that
+awful dilemma in which so many Christian wives are placed by their
+husbands, who ask them to go to places or do things which compel them
+to decide between loyalty to God and loyalty to the husband. Rather
+than ask her to compromise her Christian character encourage her to be
+more and more a Christian, for there will be times in your life when
+you will want the help of all her Christian resources; and certainly,
+when you remember how much influence your mother had over you, you do
+not want the mother of your children to set a less gracious example.
+It pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and worldly husband say
+about his wife, with no idea that it will get to her ears: "There is
+the most godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual rebuke to my
+waywardness. Nothing on earth could ever induce her to do a wrong
+thing. I hope the children will take after her instead of after me. If
+there is any heaven at all I am sure she will go there."
+
+
+THE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
+
+Ay, my brother, do you not think it would be a wise and a safe thing
+for you to join her on the road to heaven? You think you have a happy
+home now, but what a home you would have if you both were religious!
+What a new sacredness it would give to your marital relation, and what
+a new light it would throw on the forehead of your children! In
+sickness, what a comfort! In reverses of fortune, what a wealth! In
+death, what a triumph! God meant you to be the high priest of your
+household. Go home to-day and take the Bible on your lap, and gather
+all your family yet living around you, and those not living will hear
+of it in a flash, and as ministering spirits will hover--father and
+mother and children gone, and all your celestial kindred. Then kneel
+down, and if you can't think of a prayer to offer I will give you a
+prayer--namely: "Lord God, I surrender to Thee myself and my beloved
+wife, and these dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the past
+and help us for all the future. We have lived together here, may we
+live together forever. Amen and amen." Dear me, what a stir it would
+make among your best friends on earth and in heaven.
+
+
+A HUSBAND IMPRISONED.
+
+Joseph the Second, the Emperor, was so kind and so philanthropic that
+he excited the unbounded love of most of his subjects. He abolished
+serfdom, established toleration and lived in the happiness of his
+people. One day while on his way to Ostend to declare it a free port,
+and while at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman at the
+door of her cottage in dejection. The Emperor dismounted and asked the
+cause of her grief. She said that her husband had gone to Ostend to
+see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was
+an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it
+was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose
+kindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable
+admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see him
+was simply unbearable.
+
+The Emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box decorated with diamonds
+surrounding a picture of himself and presented it to her, and when the
+picture revealed to whom she was talking she knelt in reverence and
+clapped her hands in gladness before him. The Emperor took the name of
+her husband and the probable place where he might be found at Ostend,
+and had him imprisoned for the three days of the Emperor's visit, so
+that the husband returning home found that the wife had seen the
+Emperor while he had not seen him.
+
+In many families of this earth the wife, through the converting grace
+of God, has seen the "King in His beauty," and He has conferred upon
+her the pearl of great price, while the husband is an "alien from the
+covenant of promise, without God and without hope in the world," and
+imprisoned in worldliness and sin. Oh, that they might arm in arm go
+this day and see Him, who is not only greater and lovelier than any
+Joseph of earthly dominion, but "high over all, in earth, and air, and
+sky!" His touch is life. His voice is music. His smile is heaven.
+
+
+
+
+DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.
+
+    "The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good
+    understanding and of a beautiful countenance."--1 SAMUEL 25:3.
+
+
+The ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen snow, but the wool from
+the backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I
+hear the grinding of the iron blades together, and the bleating of the
+flocks, held between the knees of the shearers, while the clipping
+goes on, and the rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his wife
+Abigail preside over this homestead. David, the warrior, sends a
+delegation to apply for aid at this prosperous time of sheep-shearing,
+and Nabal peremptorily declines his request. Revenge is the cry.
+Yonder over the rocks come David and four hundred angry men with one
+stroke to demolish Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The
+regiment marches in double quick, and the stones of the mountain
+loosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift
+feet, and the cry of the commander is "Forward! Forward!"
+
+
+A FAIR PROPITIATOR.
+
+Abigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of
+the hill. She is armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own
+beauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the
+base of the craig, he cries: "Halt! Halt!" and the caverns echo it:
+"Halt! Halt!" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right
+mightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at
+the sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her
+prowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and
+put before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if
+she be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and
+devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.
+
+As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands
+how they ought to treat their wives--and, though I noticed that some
+of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well--I now
+take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their
+husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that
+while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you
+did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than
+overbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a
+hundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best
+man they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of a
+hundred of them would say: "At the other end of this pew."
+
+
+ABIGAIL'S BAD BARGAIN.
+
+I hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well
+balanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,
+you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was
+cross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her
+heroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole
+regiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home
+and found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story,
+but had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not
+want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way
+to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was
+ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of
+her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she
+could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely
+and splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?
+
+First, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific
+battle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or
+commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning
+to night is in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your
+husband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in
+this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle.
+If he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If
+he do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment,
+remember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his
+place of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man
+has been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him
+out of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on
+his desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone
+wrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and
+forgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him.
+When you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or
+shop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there
+and not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.
+
+
+RESPECT SELF-SACRIFICE.
+
+Remember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is
+overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success
+or defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of
+men after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for
+their families. They begin to ask themselves anxiously the question:
+"How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home?
+Would my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go
+out into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My
+eyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy;
+how if I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business
+life and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.
+
+Some time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks
+married on a salary less than £150--that is, $750 a year--he should be
+discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too
+great for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America
+live by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's
+family expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens
+of thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and
+exhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and
+say you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by
+inches that the home may be kept up.
+
+
+BE LOVABLE.
+
+I charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as
+she was before marriage. The reason that so often a man ceases to
+love his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable. In many cases
+what elaboration of toilet before marriage, and what recklessness of
+appearance after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a slatternly
+woman--I mean a woman who never combs her hair until she goes out, or
+looks like a fright until somebody calls. That a man married to one of
+these creatures stays at home as little as possible is no wonder. It
+is a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three
+years, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is not required; but, O
+woman! if you are not willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can
+effect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to
+complain if he seek in other society those pleasant surroundings which
+you deny him.
+
+
+DO NOT COMPLAIN.
+
+Again, I charge you never talk to others about the frailties of your
+husband.[1] Some people have a way, in banter, of elaborately
+describing to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a
+husband or wife. Ah, the world will find out soon enough all the
+defects of your companion! No need of your advertising them! Better
+imitate those women who, having made mistake in affiance, always have
+a veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention.
+We must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live
+longer with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the
+precursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep
+the awful secret to yourself--keep it from every being in the universe
+except the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only
+a few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the
+grave, and say: "O Lord, I kept the marital secret! Thou knowest how
+well I kept it, and I thank Thee that the release has come at last.
+Give me some place where I can sit down and rest awhile from the
+horrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I begin the full
+raptures of heaven." And orders will be sent out to the usher angels,
+saying: "Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in the best
+room of the palace, and let twenty of the brightest angels wait on her
+for the next thousand years."
+
+
+AVOID MEDDLERS.
+
+Further, I charge you, let there be no outside interference with the
+conjugal relation. Neither neighbor nor confidential friend, nor
+brother, nor sister, nor father, nor mother, have a right to come in
+here. The married gossip will come around, and by the hour tell you
+how she manages her husband. You tell her plainly that if she will
+attend to the affairs of her household you will attend to yours. What
+damage some people do with their tongues! Nature indicates that the
+tongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is shut in, first by
+a barricade of teeth, and then by the door of the lips. One insidious
+talker can keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up. The Apostle
+Peter excoriated these busybodies in other people's matters, and St.
+Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them a
+sharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the lookout for them, and
+never return their calls, and treat them with coldest frigidity. For
+this reason, better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are
+opposed to them, but I thank God for what are called flats in these
+cities. They put a separate home within the means of nearly all the
+population. In your married relations you do not need any advice. If
+you and your husband have not skill enough to get along well alone,
+with all the advice you can import you will get along worse. What you
+want for your craft on this voyage is plenty of sea-room.
+
+
+BE INTELLIGENT.
+
+I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your
+husband. What with these floods of newspapers and books there is no
+excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past.
+If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may
+fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the
+merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the
+mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the
+professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological,
+or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man,
+after having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without
+information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about
+what is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the
+husband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must
+"go and see a man." In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay
+at home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is
+because there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his
+wife than anyone else if she could talk as well.
+
+
+ADORN THE HOME.
+
+I charge you, my sister, in every way to make your home attractive. I
+have not enough of practical knowledge about house adornment to know
+just what makes the difference, but here is an opulent house,
+containing all wealth of _bric-a-brac_, and of musical instrument, and
+of painting, and of upholstery, and yet there is in it a chill like
+Nova Zembla. Another home, with one-twentieth part of the outlay, and
+small supply of art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as you
+enter it, there comes upon body, mind, and soul a glow of welcome and
+satisfied and happy domesticity. The holy art of making the most
+comfort and brightness out of the means afforded, every wife should
+study.
+
+At the siege of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown
+by a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from
+the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock
+discharged at him by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But without
+any weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any
+wife may slay all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and mother
+in prosperous circumstances and greatly admired was giving her chief
+time to social life. The husband spent his evenings away. The son,
+fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect
+that the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same
+turn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had
+better save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games
+were introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting
+things to tell her children. One morning the son said:
+
+"Father, you ought to have been home last night. We had a grand time.
+Such jolly games and such interesting stories!" This went on from
+night to night, and after a while the husband stayed in to see what
+was going on, and he finally got attracted, and added something of his
+own to the evening entertainments; and the result was that the wife
+and mother saved her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was
+not that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that
+ever lived since Abigail at the foot of the rock arrested the four
+hundred armed warriors?
+
+
+THE TRUE SPHERE.
+
+Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who
+think the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who
+want to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There
+are women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to
+interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is
+that the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and
+rear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God
+and the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great
+platform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made
+a missionary speech in her life, and at a missionary meeting I doubt
+whether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she
+raised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating
+religious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not
+that a better thing to do?
+
+Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing,
+frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
+opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten
+commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the
+complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,
+bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to
+discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent
+and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.
+
+
+A PRESSING WANT.
+
+What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned
+mothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest
+institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should
+have the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the
+old-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry
+wore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the
+Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture days, and was demonstrated
+on the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house
+long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet
+until in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous.
+While there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than
+there ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and
+there are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief
+sphere is outside instead of inside the home.
+
+
+A DEADLY SIN.
+
+Hence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a
+nuisance. It is card case _versus_ child's primer, carriage _versus_
+cradle, social popularity _versus_ domestic felicity. Hence
+infanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians,
+allopathic, hydropathic, homoeopathic, and eclectic are crying out in
+horror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical
+profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which
+says: "Thou shalt not kill," and the book of Revelation, which says:
+"All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with
+fire and brimstone." And the man or the woman who takes life a minute
+old will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who
+destroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriek of
+Judgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the
+high and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their
+own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination
+of the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a lot of
+infernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the
+Last Day, the crier of the Court shall with resounding "Oyez," "Oyez!"
+declare the "Oyer and Terminer" of the Universe opened, and the Judge,
+with gavel of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and
+the trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and
+patricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and
+infanticides of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or readers
+can say that they knew not what they were doing. Mighty God! arrest
+the evil that is overshadowing this century.
+
+
+THE HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
+
+I charge you, my sister, that you take your husband along with you to
+heaven. Of course this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I
+must take that for granted. It cannot be possible that after what
+Christianity has done for woman, and after taking the infinitely
+responsible position you have assumed as the head of the household,
+that you should be in a position antagonistic to Christ. It was not a
+slip of the tongue when I spoke of you as being at the head of the
+household. We men rather pride ourselves as being at the head of the
+household, but it is only a pleasant delusion. To whom do the children
+go when they have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be bound up
+or one of the first teeth that needs to be removed to make way for one
+that is crowding it out, to whom does the child go? For whom do
+children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream?
+Aye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too
+great or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the
+household in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in
+fact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the
+kingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven.
+
+You can do it! Of course God's almighty grace alone can convert him,
+but you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands out
+of heaven, and others garner them for it. If your religion, O wife! is
+simply the joke of the household, if you would rather go to the
+theatre than the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the neighborhood
+in progressive euchre, if your husband never sees you kneel at the
+bedside in prayer before retiring, if the only thing that reminds the
+family of your church relations is that on communion-day you get home
+late to dinner, you will not be able to take your husband to heaven,
+for the simple reason that you will not get there yourself. But I
+suppose that your religion is genuine, and that the husband realizes
+that there is in your soul a divine principle, and that, though you
+may be naturally quicker tempered than he is and have many
+imperfections that distress you more than they can any one else, still
+you are destined for the skies when the brief scenes of this life are
+over. How will you take him with you? There are two oars to that
+boat--prayer and holy example.
+
+But you say he belongs to a worldly club, or he does not believe a
+word of the Bible, or he is an inebriate and very loose in his habits?
+What you tell me shows that you don't understand that while you are at
+the one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and
+it is simply a question whether Almightiness is strong enough and
+keeps His word. I have no doubt there will be great conventions in
+heaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial
+assemblage the saints shall be telling what brought them to God, I
+believe that ten thousand times ten thousand will say: "My wife."
+
+
+A CONTRAST.
+
+I put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives,
+and let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his
+salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God
+some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her
+religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly
+maintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was
+her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first
+sent the arrows of conviction to my soul." The other testimony was
+from a dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family
+worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to
+neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet,
+you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." How many glorious married
+couples in heaven--Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and
+Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth,
+Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of
+them!
+
+As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's
+house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up,
+husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I
+proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I
+pronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and
+that is the shape of the Wedding Ring.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).
+
+
+
+
+COSTUME AND MORALS.
+
+    "Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are
+    haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,
+    walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their
+    feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their
+    tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their
+    round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and
+    the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and
+    the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and
+    nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,
+    and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the
+    fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,"--ISAIAH 3:16,
+    18-23.[2]
+
+
+This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us two thousand six hundred
+years back, and sets us down in an ancient city. The procession of men
+and women is moving up and down the gay streets. It is the height of
+the fashionable season. The sensible men and women move with so much
+modesty that they do not attract our attention. But here come the
+haughty daughters of Jerusalem! They lean forward; they lean very much
+forward--so far forward as to be unnatural--teetering, wobbling,
+wriggling, flirting, or, as my text describes it, they "walk with
+stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing as they go."
+
+See! That is a princess. Look! That is a Damascus sword-maker. Look!
+That is a Syrian merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the lashing
+of the headbands, and the exhibitions of universal swagger attract the
+attention of the Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear upon
+the scene, and takes a picture for all the ages. But where is that
+scene? Vanished. Where are those gay streets? Vermin-covered
+population pass through them. Where are the hands, and the necks, and
+the foreheads, and the shoulders, and the feet that sported all that
+magnificence? Ashes! Ashes!
+
+That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of
+
+
+THE FIRST WARDROBE
+
+in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far
+as our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is
+proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with
+golden sunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a
+sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
+furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and
+scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see
+the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal
+forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the
+Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she
+never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a
+fern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs,
+does it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it
+might go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million
+spears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water--I mean the
+grass with the dew on it.
+
+When the prodigal came home his father not only put a coat on his
+back, but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor
+apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the
+arrangement of a woman's hair, when he said in his epistle: "If a
+woman have long hair, it is a glory unto her." There will be fashion
+in heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It
+will decide the color of the dress; and the population of that
+country, by a beautiful law, will wear white.
+
+
+THE GODDESS OF FASHION.
+
+I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I
+have no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject
+of human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in
+this country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to
+fall down and worship. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the
+bodies and souls of ten thousand victims.
+
+When I come to count the victims of fashion I find as many masculine
+as feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were
+the chief worshipper at this idolatrous shrine, and no doubt some men
+in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at
+the more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous
+distribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew
+as for the other.
+
+
+MASCULINE FOLLIES.
+
+Men are as much the idolaters of fashion as women, but they sacrifice
+on a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars,
+and club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United
+States the men chew up and smoke one hundred millions of dollars'
+worth of tobacco every year. That is their fashion. In London not
+long ago a man died who started in life with $750,000; but he ate it
+all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for
+some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing
+him three or four hundred dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and
+had only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it
+dressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hours for digestion,
+then walked out on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into the
+Thames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen
+done on a small scale.
+
+But men do not abstain from millinery and elaboration of skirt through
+any superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages
+would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three
+and a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the
+disciples of custom just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so
+tight that they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness, and
+there are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for
+them, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like
+animated checkerboards. I say these things because I want to show you
+that I am impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes, in the
+language of the surrogate's office, "share and share alike."
+
+
+INDELICATE APPAREL.
+
+As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of
+improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple
+truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it,
+that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the
+temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a
+shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for
+vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can
+come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of
+masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided
+reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer
+of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a
+so-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel,
+ordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself
+immediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make
+vehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of
+the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the
+female costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and
+that fathers prohibit their daughters. The evil is terrific and
+overshadowing.
+
+
+STAGE COSTUMES.
+
+I suppose that the American stage is responsible for much of this. I
+do not go to the theatres, so I must take the evidence of the actors
+and managers of theatres, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A.M. Palmer,
+and Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have recently told us that the crime
+of undress is blasting the theatre, which by many is considered a
+school of morals, and indeed superior to the Church, and a forerunner
+of the millennium. Mr. Palmer says: "The bulk of the performances on
+the stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come
+just as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law.
+There never have been costumes worn on a stage of this city, either in
+a theatre, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of
+the chorus in recent comic opera productions." He says in regard to
+the female performers: "It is not a question whether they can sing,
+but just how little they will consent to wear." Mr. Bandmann, who has
+been twenty-nine years on the stage, and before almost all
+nationalities, says: "I unhesitatingly state that the taste of the
+present theatre-going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse and
+vulgar nature. The Hindoo would turn with disgust at such
+exhibitions, which are sought after and applauded on the stage of this
+country. Our shop windows are full of and the walls covered with show
+cards and posters which should be a disgrace to an enlightened country
+and an insult to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert says:
+"Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community.
+Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say
+nothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like
+that? It is shameful!"
+
+I must take the testimony of the friends of the theatre and the
+confirmation which I see on the board fences and in the show windows
+containing the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose that
+those representations of play-house costume are true, for if they are
+not true, then those highly moral and religious theatres are swindling
+the public by inducing the people to the theatre by promises of
+spectacular nudity which they do not fulfill. Now, all this
+familiarizes the public with such improprieties of costume and
+depresses the public conscience as to what is allowable and right.
+
+
+DRAWING-ROOM RIVALRY.
+
+The parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre
+and opera bouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the
+latter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining
+on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass
+the stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will
+clap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half
+because the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform,
+and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly
+attire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor
+adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the
+fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of
+France, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of
+morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.
+Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means
+a contaminated and depraved society.
+
+
+EXTRAVAGANCE.
+
+It is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but
+extravagance of costume. This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable
+and ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to
+sell his country in order to get money to support his home wardrobe? I
+declare here before God and this people that the effort to keep up
+expensive establishments in this country is sending more business men
+to temporal perdition than all other causes combined. It was this that
+sent prominent business men to the watering of stocks, and life
+insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and
+some of them to the penitentiary, and has completely upset our
+American finances.
+
+But why should I go to these famous defaultings, to show what men will
+do in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when
+you and I know scores of men who are put to their wit's end and are
+lashed from January to December in the attempt? Our Washington
+politicians may theorize until the expiration of their terms of office
+as to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this
+country. It will be of no use, and things will be no better until we
+learn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we
+can pay for.
+
+
+AN INCENTIVE TO DISHONESTY.
+
+There are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who in the
+vain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other
+folk's wardrobes are dying of muffs, and diamonds, and camel's-hair
+shawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left except what they
+give to cigars and wine suppers, and they die before their time, and
+they will expect us ministers to preach about them as though they were
+the victims of early piety; and after a high-class funeral, with
+silver handles at the side of their coffin of extraordinary
+brightness, it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated out of
+his legitimate expenses! Do not send to me to preach the funeral
+sermon of a man who dies like that. I would blurt out the whole truth,
+and tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's ribbons! The
+country is dressed to death.
+
+You are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public
+building in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to
+have cost, when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid
+more than five thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding dress.
+Cashmeres of a thousand dollars each are not rare on Broadway. It is
+estimated that there are eight thousand women in these two cities who
+have expended on their personal array two thousand dollars a year.
+
+What are the men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes?
+Steal--that is the only respectable thing they can do! During the last
+fifteen years there have been innumerable fine business men
+shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comes in this way: a man
+thinks more of his family than all the world outside, and if they
+spend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe of the
+family across the street that they cannot bear the sight of, the man
+is thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family, and without
+translating his feelings into plain language, he goes into extortion
+and issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody
+else's name at the foot of a promissory note; and they all go down
+together--the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine,
+the children to be taken care of by those who were called poor
+relations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF CLOTHES!
+
+Act the first of the tragedy: A plain but beautiful home. Enter the
+newly married pair. Enter simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as
+much happiness as is ever found in one home.
+
+Act the second: Discontent with the humble home. Enter envy. Enter
+jealousy. Enter desire to display.
+
+Act the third: Enlargement of expenses. Enter all the queenly
+dressmakers. Enter the French milliners.
+
+Act the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter princes and princesses
+of New York life. Enter magnificent plate and equipage. Enter
+everything splendid.
+
+Act the fifth and last, winding up the scene: Enter the assignee.
+Enter the sheriff. Enter the creditors. Enter humiliation. Enter the
+wrath of God. Enter the contempt of society. Enter death. Now, let the
+silk curtain drop on the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights are
+out.
+
+Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of
+the men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle
+to pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me
+or not.
+
+
+CURTAILS BENEVOLENCE.
+
+Again, extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian alms-giving.
+Men and women put so much in personal display that they often have
+nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity--a Christian man
+cracking his Palais Royal gloves across the back by shutting up his
+hand to hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a Christian woman
+at the story of the Hottentots crying copious tears into a twenty-five
+dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the
+collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know
+but it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to
+fashion--two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every
+dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him.
+Is not God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the
+Old Testament--is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a
+dollar when he takes but ten? We do not like that. We want to have
+ninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.
+
+Now, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents from you than God. I
+think one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly
+accumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule.
+God says: "Well, if that man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of
+a dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the
+man or woman who is honest with me." The greatest obstacle to charity
+in the Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on
+their table, and women so much on their dress, they have got nothing
+left for the work of God and the world's betterment.
+
+
+DISTRACTS ATTENTION.
+
+Again, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You
+know very well there are a good many people who go to church just as
+they go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women
+with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man
+got his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our
+churches the preliminary exercises are taken up with the discussion
+of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does
+not strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of
+public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be
+turned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks.
+People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at
+the same time in personal array, to sing:
+
+    "Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+      Thy better portion trace;
+    Rise from transitory things
+      Toward heaven, thy native place!"
+
+I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: "Good Lord, deliver us!"
+
+
+MENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.
+
+Extravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or
+they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on
+which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to
+the human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street
+who, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours
+to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of
+absorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be
+powerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left
+of a woman's intellect after giving years and years to the discussion
+of such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the
+summer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they
+once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest.
+Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's
+fan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered
+twenty years ago.
+
+
+BARS HEAVEN.
+
+Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil.
+It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder
+that shook Sinai declared: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"
+and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the
+Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are
+all easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is
+for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of
+their souls than of their bodies.
+
+Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up heaven. What would you do
+standing beside the Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to build
+chapels for the poor; or with that Christian woman of Boston, who fed
+fifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New
+Year's Day, giving out as a sort of doxology at the end of the
+meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them; or those Dorcases of
+modern society who have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and who
+will get eternal reward for every stitch they take?
+
+
+PERPETUAL ENVY.
+
+Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of costume! The rivalries and
+the competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You
+will always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial
+residence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And
+if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought
+something else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring
+the crow's feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come
+to die you will have a miserable time.
+
+I have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw
+one of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled
+pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them--a wasted
+life and a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body,
+mind, and soul had been exhausted in the worship of costume, and they
+could not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside they
+were mumbling out their regrets, and saying: "O God! O God!" Their
+garments hung up in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them.
+Without any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died
+without hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly
+death-beds on earth are the one where a man dies of delirium tremens,
+and the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her
+faculties of body, mind and soul in the worship of costume.
+
+
+JUDGMENT TO COME.
+
+My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn
+on our bodies as well as for what repentances we have exercised with
+our souls. On that day I see coming in Beau Brummell of the last
+century without his cloak; Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old
+age he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and
+Absalom without his hair; and Marchioness Pompadour without her
+titles; and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street, when that was the
+centre of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture.
+
+And in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation,
+while among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who
+wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah,
+who annually made a little coat for Samuel at the temple; and
+Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue;
+and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the
+wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present
+Christian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the
+kingdom of God. Christ announced who would make up the royal family of
+heaven when He said: "Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my
+brother, my sister, my mother."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] The list of feminine treasures given by the Revised Version is more
+intelligible. It is: "Their anklets, and the networks, and the
+crescents; the pendants, and the bracelets, and the mufflers; the
+head-tires, and the ankle chains, and the sashes, and the perfume boxes,
+and the amulets; the rings, and the nose-jewels; the festival robes, and
+the mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels; the hand-mirrors, and the
+fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils."
+
+
+
+
+HUSBANDS AND WIVES.
+
+    "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+    and the wife see that she reverence her husband."--EPHESIANS
+    5:33.
+
+
+All this good advice by a man who never married. He lived on to
+fifty-eight years of age, in eminent bachelorhood. Indeed, it was
+better for Paul to remain in single life, because he went on such
+rapid missionary expeditions that no companion could have endured the
+hardship. Celibacy in some cases is better. Such persons accomplish
+under such circumstances that which could not be accomplished in the
+other style of life.
+
+I have known men who remain unaffianced in order that they might take
+care of the children of a deceased brother; and what would become of
+the world without the self-sacrifice and helpfulness of the maiden
+aunts I cannot imagine.
+
+Among the brightest queens of Heaven will be those who took care of
+other people's children. Alas for that household which has not within
+easy call an Aunt Mary! I know that there are caricatures, and
+ungallant things sometimes said; but so far as my observation goes,
+they are quite equal in disposition to their married sisters. The
+state of celibacy is honored again by such persons as Macaulay and
+Washington Irving in literature, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix
+in philanthropy.
+
+But while Paul remained in the single state, he kept his eyes open,
+and he looked off upon the calm sea of married life, and upon the
+chopped sea of domestic perturbation. He comes forth in my text to
+say, "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+and the wife see that she reverence her husband;" implying that the
+wife ought to be lovable, so there might be something to love, and the
+man ought to be honorable, so there might be something to reverence.
+
+It is
+
+
+A MOST CONGRATULATORY THOUGHT
+
+that the vast majority of people in the married state are well mated.
+When the news is first announced in the outside world of the
+betrothal, there may be surprise and seeming incongruity, but as the
+years pass by it is demonstrated that the selection was divinely
+arranged. There may be great difference of temperament, great
+difference of appearance, great difference of circumstances. That is
+no objection. The sanguine and the phlegmatic temperaments make
+appropriate union, the blonde and the brunette, the quick and the
+slow, the French and the German. In the machinery of domestic life
+there is no more need for the driving wheel than for the brakes. That
+is the best union generally which has just the opposites.
+
+The best argument in behalf of marriage as a divine institution is the
+fact that the vast majority of conjugal relationships are the very
+best things that could have happened. Once in a while there is a
+resounding exception to the good rule, the attempt being made to marry
+fire and gunpowder, with the consequent explosion in the divorce
+courts; but in the vast majority of instances the conjugal relation is
+a beautiful illustration of what the Psalmist said when he declared,
+"God setteth the solitary in families."
+
+Taking it for granted, then, that you are well mated, I proceed to
+give you some
+
+
+PRESCRIPTIONS FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS;
+
+and, first of all, I remark:
+
+I. A spirit of compromise must be dominant. You must remember that you
+were twenty or thirty years forming independent habits and having your
+own way. In the marriage state these habits must be brought into
+accord, and there may be some ingenuity necessary. Be determined to
+have your own way, and there will be no peace. Let the rule be: In
+all matters of moral principle your determination shall be iron, and
+in all unimportant matters, willow. Whatever you may think of the word
+compromise in politics, without compromise there is no domestic peace.
+A great many people are willing to compromise, if you will do just as
+they want you to do; but there is no compromise in that. The rule
+ought to be: In all domestic matters, all social matters, all
+ecclesiastical matters, all political matters, firm adherence to
+fundamentals, easy surrender in non-essentials. Be not too proud or
+too stubborn to give up. Compromise! Compromise!
+
+II. I remark, again, that in order to domestic happiness there must be
+a spirit of
+
+
+CONSULTATION.
+
+The home ought to be a cabinet, where all the affairs of the household
+and all the affairs of business life come under comparison, inspection
+and advisal. That is an absurd rule we hear abroad in the world, that
+men ought never to take their business home. Ten thousand financial
+failures would have been avoided if men had consulted with their
+wives.
+
+In the first place, woman has a capacity to judge of moral character
+which man has not. Before you invite into your business partnership
+any man, you ought to introduce him to your wife, and get her judgment
+as to his capacity and his integrity. After five minutes' conversation
+she will tell you as much about him as you will know at the close of
+twenty years, and perhaps you may find out too late.
+
+A man proposes to come into your business partnership. You take him to
+your home. He tarries a little while, and is gone. You say to your
+wife, "Well, what do you think of him?" She says, "I don't like him at
+all." You say, "It's an absurd thing to form a prejudice against him
+on so short an acquaintance. I have known him for years, and I have
+never known any bad against him." "Well," she says, "I don't know why
+I have formed that opinion, but I tell you to beware. Put none of your
+financial interests in that man's keeping." Ten or fifteen years pass
+by. You come home some night and say, "Well, my dear, you are right;
+that man swindled me out of my last dollar." It is not because woman
+is wiser than man. It is because God has given her that peculiar
+intuition in regard to human character.
+
+Now, you have no right to go into an enterprise which involves the
+homestead, or the education of your children, or the fate of your
+entire family, without home consultation. Of course, all this implies
+that you did not marry a fool. If at the marriage altar you committed
+suicide, you had better keep all your business affairs in your own
+heart and head. But let us hope that you have sound common sense
+presiding in your household.
+
+
+A BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT.
+
+How much a wife may help a husband's business affairs was well
+illustrated in the case where the wife saved from the allowance of
+herself and the allowance of the family, a certain amount of money for
+a rainy day. After some time the husband, coming home, said: "Well,
+I'm going to suspend payment to-morrow. A few dollars would get me
+through, but I can't get the few dollars, and I'm going to ruin." That
+evening the wife said: "I wish you would hunt up the definition of the
+word 'independence' in Webster's Dictionary. Hunt it up for me." He
+opened Webster's Dictionary, and found the word "independence," and
+right opposite was a $100 bill. "Now," she said, "I would like to have
+you find the word 'gratitude.'" He turned to the word "gratitude," and
+there was another $100 bill. And before the evening was past she asked
+him to read a verse of a certain chapter of the Bible. He opened to
+the verse in the Bible, and there were $500, and before the evening
+had passed, the man had financial relief to tide him over his
+disasters. You call that dramatic. I call that beautifully Christian.
+
+In all expenditures there ought to be consultation. Do not dole out
+money to your wife as though she were a beggar. Let her know how much
+you have, or how little. Appeal to her intelligent judgment, and she
+will be content, and your own disposition will not be irritated. As
+long as you keep a mystery about your business matters she will wonder
+that the allowance is so small. No honorable woman wants to spend more
+money than can be afforded. Come into consultation with her on this
+matter. Show what are all your necessary outside expenses, all the
+money you have for cigars and dinners at Delmonico's, and how much it
+takes for the club-house and for the political campaign, and then have
+her present all the domestic expenses, and then, after consultation do
+your best.
+
+It is a bad sign when a man dare not tell his business transactions to
+his wife. There is something wrong. Suppose you that the gigantic
+forgeries which have been enacted in this country would ever have
+taken place if the wife had been consulted? The wife would have said,
+"Stop! Let us live in one room in the poorest house on the poorest
+street of the poorest town, and have nothing but dry bread rather than
+that you should make yourself culpable before God and the law." In
+the vast majority of cases where there has been exposure of great
+frauds, the wife has been the most surprised person in the community.
+
+
+A BANKER
+
+some time ago misused trust funds, and he went from fraud to fraud,
+and from knavery to knavery, until it was necessary for him to leave
+home before daylight. His wife said: "Where are you going?" "I am
+going to New York," said he "I am going on the early train." "Why,
+isn't this sudden?" she asked. "Oh, no; I expected to go," and then he
+left the room and went up to the room where his daughters slept,
+looked upon their calm faces for the last time, as he supposed, and
+started. He was brought back by the constables of an outraged law, and
+is now in the penitentiary.
+
+Do you suppose that man, with a good wife, as he had, an honest wife,
+as he had, a Christian wife, as he had, could have got into such an
+enormity if he had consulted in regard to her wishes? Consultation is
+the word--domestic consultation.
+
+III. Again: in order to domestic happiness, there must, in the
+conjugal state, be
+
+
+NO SECRETS
+
+kept one from the other. What one knows both must know. It is a bad
+sign when one partner in the conjugal relation is afraid to have the
+letters opened or read by the other partner. Surreptitious
+correspondence is always dangerous. If a man comes to you and says, "I
+am going to tell you a great privacy, and don't want you to tell
+anybody, not even your wife," say to him, "Well, now, you had better
+not tell me, for I shall tell her as soon as I get home."
+
+There must be no secrecy of association. You ought not to be unwilling
+to tell where you have been, and with whom you have been. Sometimes an
+unwise wife will have a lady confidante whom she makes a depository of
+privacies which they are pledged to keep between themselves. Beware!
+Anything that implies that husband and wife are two and not one
+implies peril, domestic peril, social peril, mighty peril.
+
+In the vast majority of cases of domestic infelicity coming to
+exposure in the courts, the trouble began by the accidental opening of
+a letter which implied correspondence which was never suspected. In
+the conjugal relations, secrets kept one from another are
+nitro-glycerine under the hearthstone, and the fuse is lighted!
+
+IV. Again: in order to your happiness there must be a spirit of
+
+
+FORBEARANCE.
+
+In the weeks, the months, the years that you were planning for each
+other's conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was
+observable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known
+the one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you
+are one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of
+faults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having
+found out all of each others imperfections, forbear.
+
+If the one be given to too much precision, and the other disorderly in
+habits; if the one be spendthrift and the other oversaving; if the one
+be loquacious, and the other reticent, forbear. Especially, if you
+both have inflammable tempers, do not both get mad at once. Take turn
+about! William Cowper put it well when he said:
+
+    "The kindest and the happiest pair
+    Will find occasion to forbear;
+    And something every day they live
+    To pity, and perhaps forgive."
+
+V. Again: in order to your happiness, let there be no interfering with
+each other's peculiar
+
+
+RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.
+
+If you are a Baptist and your wife a Pedo-Baptist, do not go to
+splashing water into each other's faces! If you are a Presbyterian and
+your husband is a Methodist, when he shouts "Hallelujah!" do not get
+nervous.
+
+If you have strong denominational proclivities, one of you had better
+go to one church, and the other had better go to another church; or,
+surrendering some of your intensity on that subject, as in hundreds of
+cases, come to some such church as the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where,
+while we adhere to the fundamentals of the Gospel, we do not care a
+rye straw for the infinitesimal differences between evangelical
+denominations--putting one drop of water on the brow, if that is
+enough baptism, and if not, then plunging the candidate clear out of
+sight, if that is preferred--not caring whether you believe you have
+been foreordained to be saved or not, if you are only saved; nor
+whether you believe in the perseverance of the saints or not, if you
+will only persevere; nor whether you prefer prayer by Episcopal
+liturgy or extemporaneous supplication, if you only pray.
+
+Do not let there be any religious contests across the breakfast table
+or the tea table. It makes but little difference from what direction
+you come toward the riven heart of Christ, if you only come up to the
+riven heart. Yet, I know in many families there is constant picking at
+opposite religious beliefs, and attempt at proselytism. You, the
+father, fight for Episcopacy, and you, the mother, fight for
+Presbyterianism, and your children will compromise the matter and be
+Nothingarians!
+
+VI. Again: I counsel you, in order to your domestic happiness, that
+you
+
+
+CULTIVATE EACH OTHER'S RELIGIOUS WELFARE.
+
+This is a profoundly agitating thought to every fair-minded man and
+woman. You live, together on earth; you want to live together forever.
+You do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your
+association, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God
+with you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is
+because you do not understand Christian stratagem.
+
+Every Christian companion may take his or her companion into glory.
+How? Ask God, and he will tell you how. Perhaps by occasional
+religious remark. Perhaps by earnest prayer. Perhaps by a consistent
+life. More probably by all these things combined. Paul put it
+forcefully when he said: "How knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+save thy husband? how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
+wife?" In this house, how many have been remarried for the skies!
+
+It has become so much the general rule that when in my congregation,
+as I often do, I find a family in which the wife is a Christian, and
+the husband is not, I just say frankly to him: "Now you have got to
+come in. You might just as well try to swim up against Niagara rapids
+as against the tide of religious influence which in this church is
+going to surge you into the kingdom of God. You must come in. You know
+that your wife is right in this matter of religion. She may be quick
+of temper, and you may sometimes lose your patience with her, but you
+know she is better than you are, and you know when she dies she will
+go as straight to heaven as a shot to a target.
+
+"And, if to-day, on the way home, a vehicle should dash down the
+street, and she should fall lifeless, with no opportunity for last
+words, you might have a doubt about what would become of you, and a
+doubt about what would become of the children, but you would have no
+doubt about her eternal destiny. Somewhere under the flush of her
+cheek, or under the pallor of her brow is the Lord's mark. She is your
+wife, but she is God's child, and you are not jealous of that
+relationship. You only wish that you yourself were a son of the Lord
+Almighty. Come and have the matter settled. If I die before you, I
+will not forget in the next world how you stood together here, but I
+will expect both of you. You must come.
+
+"I say it in all Christian love and emphasis, as a brother talks to a
+brother. You must come. You have been united so long, you cannot
+afford to have death divorce you. How long it is since you began the
+struggle of life together! You have helped each other on the road, and
+what you have done for each other God only knows. There have been
+tedious sicknesses, and anxious watching, and here and there a grave,
+short but very deep; and though the blossoms of the marriage day may
+have scattered, and the lips that pronounced you one may have gone
+into dust, you have through all these years been to each other true as
+steel.
+
+"Now, to-day, I am going to remarry you for heaven. This is the bridal
+day of your soul's peace. Here is the marriage altar. Kneel side by
+side, take the oath of eternal fidelity, clasp hands in a covenant
+never to be broken. I pronounce you one on earth, I pronounce you one
+for eternity. What God by His grace hath joined together, let not
+earth or hell put asunder. Hark! I hear a humming in the air--an
+anthem--a wedding march--organs celestial played upon by fingers
+seraphic."
+
+I do not think I ever read anything more beautiful and quaintly
+pathetic than
+
+
+COTTON MATHER'S DESCRIPTION
+
+of the departure of his wife from earth to Heaven: "The black day
+arrives. I had never seen so black a day in all the time of my
+pilgrimage. The desire of my eyes is this day to be taken from me at
+a stroke. Her death is lingering and painful. All the forenoon of this
+day she was in the pangs of death, and sensible until the last minute
+or two before her final expiration. I cannot remember the discourse
+that passed between us, only her devout soul was full of satisfaction
+about her going to a state of blessedness with the Lord Jesus Christ.
+As far as my distress would permit, I studied to confirm her
+satisfaction and consolation.
+
+"When I saw to what a point of resignation I was called of the Lord, I
+resolved, with His help, to glorify Him. So, two hours before she
+expired, I knelt by her bedside and took into my hands that dear hand,
+the dearest in the world, and solemnly and sincerely gave her up to
+the Lord. I gently put her out of my hands and laid away her hand,
+resolved that I would not touch it again. She afterward told me that
+she signed and sealed my act of resignation, and though before that
+she had called for me continually, after it she never asked for me any
+more. She conversed much until near two in the afternoon. The last
+sensible word she spoke was to her weeping father: 'Heaven, Heaven
+will make amends for all!'"
+
+Now let us be faithful in this relation of which I have been speaking.
+Do you want to know
+
+
+WHAT THE LORD THINKS OF IT?
+
+Read the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, where he says: "As the
+bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over
+thee." There is a wedding coming which will eclipse all the princely
+and imperial weddings the world ever saw. It was a great day when
+Napoleon took Josephine; it was a great day when Henry VIII. led Anne
+Boleyn over the cloth of gold on the street, the cloth of gold
+reaching up to the palace; it was a great day when the King of Spain
+took Mercedes; but there will be a greater time when the Lord shall
+take His bride, the Church, to Himself.
+
+Long time ago they were affianced, but she has been down in the
+wilderness. He has written her again and again, and the day of
+marriage is fixed. She has sent word to Him. He has sent word to her.
+But, oh! was there ever such a difference in estate? The King on the
+one side, the bride of the wilderness, poor and persecuted, on the
+other. The wealth of the universe on the one side, the obscurity of
+the ages on the other. The pomp of heaven on the one side, the poverty
+of earth on the other. But He will endow her with all His wealth, and
+raise her to sit with Him on a throne forever.
+
+Come, thou bridal morn of the ages! Come! and there shall be the
+rumbling of great wheels, great chariot wheels down the sky, and there
+shall be riders ahead and mounted cavalry behind, the conquerors of
+heaven on white horses. Clear the way! A thousand trumpets blare.
+"Behold! the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him."
+
+Then the charioteers shall rein in their bounding steeds of fire, and
+the King shall dismount from the chariot, and He shall take by the
+hand the bride of the wilderness, all the crowded galleries of the
+universe, the spectators. Ring all the wedding bells of heaven. The
+King lifts the bride into the chariot and cries, "Drive on! drive up!"
+and the clouds shall spread their cloth of gold for the procession,
+and the twain shall go through the gates triumphant, and up the
+streets, and then step into the palace at the banquet, where ten
+thousand potentates and principalities and dominations, cherubic and
+archangelic, with ten thousand gleaming and uplifted chalices, shall
+celebrate the day when the King of Heaven and earth brings home His
+bride from the wilderness. Make haste, my beloved. Be thou like to a
+roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONIAL DISCORDS.
+
+    "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"--AMOS 3:3.
+
+
+A church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within
+a world, is spelled by four letters--Home! If things go right there,
+they go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong
+everywhere. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the foundation of
+Church and State. A man never gets higher than his own garret or lower
+than his own cellar. In other words, domestic life overarches and
+undergirds all other life. The highest House of Congress is the
+domestic circle; the rocking-chair in the nursery is higher than a
+throne. George Washington commanded the forces of the United States,
+but Mary Washington commanded George. Chrysostom's mother made his pen
+for him. If a man should start out and run seventy years in a straight
+line he could not get out from under the shadow of his own
+mantelpiece. I therefore talk to you this morning about a matter of
+infinite and eternal moment when I speak of your home.
+
+
+THE SOCIAL BALANCE.
+
+As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then
+he gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you
+lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the
+cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience,
+another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the
+enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or
+made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,
+the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It
+is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that
+radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater,
+taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the
+opposites.
+
+I have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a
+driving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the
+centre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives
+to Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them
+with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are
+not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The
+water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and
+the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and
+the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that
+God has put us, or intended we should occupy.
+
+
+A RELIC OF EDEN.
+
+For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in
+still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same
+varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in
+temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
+husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister
+be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and
+Martha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be
+no Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
+The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;
+the bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his
+hand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot
+forth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron
+beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come
+whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but
+there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River
+Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does
+not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an
+addition of ribs.
+
+
+THE HOME ASSAULTED.
+
+This institution of marriage has been defamed in our day, and
+influences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem
+or a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively
+silent, novels--their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness--are
+trying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation
+in regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and
+eternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! It
+is a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or
+hell. Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands! Alas for the
+mingling of the nightshade with the marriage garlands! Alas for the
+venom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas for the white frosts of
+eternal death that kill the orange blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus
+Christ is to assert what is right and to assert what is wrong.
+
+
+THE ASSAULT OF THE SORDID.
+
+Attempt has been made to take the marriage institution, which was
+intended for the happiness and elevation of the race, and make it a
+mere commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and lands and
+equipage; a business partnership of two, stuffed up with the stories
+of romance and knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and feminine
+angelhood. The two after a while have roused up to find that, instead
+of the paradise they dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van
+Amburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild-cats. Twenty thousand
+divorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst revolution that
+France ever saw. It was only the first course in that banquet of hell;
+and I tell you what you know as well as I do, that wrong notions on
+the subject of Christian marriage are the cause at this day of more
+moral outrage before God and man than any other cause.
+
+There are some things that I want to bring before you. I know there
+are those of you who have had homes set up for a great many years; and
+then there are those here who have just established their home. They
+have only been in it a few months or a few years. Then there are those
+who will, after awhile, set up for themselves a home, and it is right
+that I should speak out upon these themes.
+
+
+THE BENEFICENT GUEST.
+
+My first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new home, if it be a
+new home, and let Him who was a guest at Bethany be in your
+household; let the divine blessing drop upon your every hope and plan
+and expectation. Those young people who begin with God end with
+heaven. Have on your right hand the engagement ring of the divine
+affection. If one of you be a Christian, let that one take a Bible and
+read a few verses in the evening-time, and then kneel down and commend
+yourselves to Him who setteth the solitary in families. I want to tell
+you that the destroying angel passes by without touching or entering
+the door-post sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant.
+Why is it that in some families they never get along, and in others
+they always get along well? I have watched such cases, and have come
+to a conclusion. In the first instance, nothing seemed to go
+pleasantly, and after awhile came devastation, domestic disaster or
+estrangement. Why? They started wrong! In the other case, although
+there were hardships and trials, and some things that had to be
+explained, still things went on pleasantly until the very last. Why?
+They started right!
+
+
+FORBEARANCE NEEDED.
+
+My advice to you in your home is to exercise to the very last
+possibility of your nature the law of forbearance. Prayers in the
+household will not make up for everything. Some of the best people in
+the world are the hardest to get along with. There are people who
+stand up in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are
+uncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you
+want it. Sometimes it will be the duty of the husband, and sometimes
+of the wife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on your rights,
+and you will have a Waterloo with no Blucher coming up at nightfall to
+decide the conflict.
+
+
+A GRANDFATHER'S APOLOGY.
+
+Never be ashamed to apologize when you have done wrong in domestic
+affairs. Let that be a law of your household. The best thing I ever
+heard of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this: that once, having
+unrighteously rebuked one of his children, he himself having lost his
+patience, and, perhaps, having been misinformed of the child's doings,
+found out his mistake, and in the evening of the same day gathered all
+his family together, and said: "Now I have one explanation to make,
+and one thing to say. Thomas, this morning, I rebuked you very
+unfairly. I am very sorry for it. I rebuked you in the presence of the
+whole family, and now I ask your forgiveness in their presence." It
+must have taken some courage to do that. It was right, was it not?
+Never be ashamed to apologize for domestic inaccuracy. Find out the
+points; what are the weak points, if I may call them so, of your
+companion, and then stand aloof from them.
+
+Do not carry the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the
+wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband
+be careful where he throws his slippers. If the husband come home from
+the store with his patience all exhausted, do not let the wife
+unnecessarily cross his temper; but both stand up for your rights, and
+I will promise the everlasting sound of the war-whoop. Your life will
+be spent in making up, and marriage will be to you an unmitigated
+curse. Cowper said:
+
+    "The kindest and the happiest pair
+    Will find occasion to forbear;
+    And something every day they live,
+    To pity, and perhaps forgive."
+
+I advise, also, that you make your chief pleasure circle around about
+that home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband
+spend the most of his nights away from home, of choice, and not of
+necessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the
+cashier. If the wife throw the cares of the household in the servant's
+lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or theatre,
+she may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that
+would confound a French milliner, but they are orphans. Oh, it is sad
+when a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off
+to the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw
+them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but the jaws of New
+York and Brooklyn dissipation are swallowing down more little children
+to-day than all the monsters that ever crawled upon the banks of the
+Ganges!
+
+
+A GODLESS MOTHER'S GRIEF.
+
+I have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on the death of a child she
+had neglected. It was not so much grief that she felt from the fact
+that the child was dead as the fact that she had neglected it. She
+said: "If I had only watched over and cared for the child, I know God
+would not have taken it." The tears came not; it was a dry, blistering
+tempest--a scorching simoon of the desert. When she wrung her hands it
+seemed as if she would twist her fingers from their sockets; when she
+seized her hair it seemed as if she had, in wild terror, grasped a
+coiling serpent with her right hand.
+
+No tears! Comrades of the little one came in and wept over the coffin;
+neighbors came in, and the moment they saw the still face of the child
+the shower broke. No tears for her. God gives tears as the summer rain
+to the parched soul; but in all the universe the driest and hottest,
+the most scorching and consuming thing is a mother's heart if she has
+neglected her child, when once it is dead. God may forgive her, but
+she will never forgive herself. The memory will sink the eyes deeper
+into the sockets, and pinch the face, and whiten the hair, and eat up
+the heart with vultures that will not be satisfied, forever plunging
+deeper their iron beaks. Oh, you wanderers from your home, go back to
+your duty! The brightest flowers in all the earth are those which grow
+in the garden of a Christian household, clambering over the porch of a
+Christian home.
+
+
+MATRIMONIAL CONGENIALITY.
+
+I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James
+Mackintosh, one of the most eminent and elegant men that ever lived,
+while standing at the very height of his eminence, said to a great
+company of scholars: "My wife made me." The wife ought to be the
+advising partner in every firm. She ought to be interested in all the
+losses and gains of shop and store. She ought to have a right--she has
+a right--to know everything. If a man goes into a business transaction
+that he dare not tell his wife of, you may depend that he is on the
+way either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things which
+he does not wish to trouble his wife with; but if he dare not tell
+her, he is on the road to discomfiture.
+
+On the other hand, the husband ought to be sympathetic with the wife's
+occupation. It is no easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that could
+have endured martyrdom as well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has
+actually been worn out by house management. There are a thousand
+martyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexations of
+the day, around the stove or the table, or in the nursery or parlor,
+to have your husband say: "You know nothing about trouble; you ought
+to be in the store half an hour." Sympathy of occupation!
+
+If the husband's work cover him with the soot of the furnace or the
+odors of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily
+disgusted at the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your gains are one,
+your interests are one, your losses are one; lay hold of the work of
+life with both hands. Four hands to fight the battles; four eyes to
+watch for the danger; four shoulders on which to carry the trials. It
+is a very sad thing when the painter has a wife who does not like
+pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when she has a husband
+who does not like music.
+
+
+GENTEEL BUSINESS.
+
+It is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited unless her husband
+has what is called a "genteel business." So far as I understand a
+"genteel business," it is something to which a man goes at ten o'clock
+in the morning, and from which he comes home at two or three o'clock
+in the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for doing nothing.
+That is, I believe, a "genteel business;" and there has been many a
+wife who has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the husband
+has given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning of the
+banisters, or the building of the walls, and put himself in circles
+where he has nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine, and get
+himself into habits that upset him, going down in the maelstrom,
+taking his wife and children with him.
+
+There are a good many trains running from earth to destruction. They
+start all the hours of the day, and all the hours of the night. There
+are the freight trains; they go very slowly and very heavily; and
+there are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, and
+they stop very often and let a man get out when he wants to. But
+genteel idleness is an express train; Satan is the stoker, and Death
+is the engineer; and though one may come out in front of it and swing
+the red flag of "danger," or the lantern of God's Word, it makes just
+one shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout and a
+wail and a shriek--crash, crash! There are two classes of people sure
+of destruction: First, those who have nothing to do; secondly, those
+who have something to do, but are too lazy or too proud to do it.
+
+
+LOVE TO PRESIDE.
+
+I have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a happy
+home, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the
+domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress
+you give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you
+occupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone. When the
+husband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness
+of voice, by strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of
+domestic bliss has become a despotism that neither God nor man will
+abide. Oh, ye who promised to love each other at the altar, how dare
+you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on your affection.
+It is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it live again. The
+blast from hell that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness
+of darkness forever.
+
+
+A HOUSE NOT A HOME.
+
+Here are a man and wife; they agree in nothing else, but they agree
+they will have a home. They will have a splendid house, and they think
+that if they have a house they will have a home. Architects make the
+plan, and the mechanics execute it; the house to cost one hundred
+thousand dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread, lights are
+hoisted, curtains are hung, cards of invitation sent out. The horses
+in gold-plated harness prance at the gate; guests come in and take
+their places; the flute sounds; the dancers go up and down; and with
+one grand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the mirth of the great
+town wheel amidst the pictured walls.
+
+Ha! this is happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the
+music; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow of sculpture; sound
+it up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness,
+indeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to
+Happiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers
+and pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and let it be
+a throne; and then let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and we
+will stand around and, all chalices lifted, we will say: "Drink, O
+Queen! live forever!"
+
+
+LIGHTS OUT.
+
+But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of
+the impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the
+household come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amid
+the parlor floor. But, alas! as they come back the flowers have faded,
+the sweet odors have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead
+of the Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish,
+with bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her hair.
+
+The romp and joyous step of the dancers who have left seems rumbling
+yet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses
+of the feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into
+blood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors
+catch tangled in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of
+wind comes through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber,
+in which all the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers
+come the words: "Happiness is not in us!" And the arches respond: "It
+is not in us!" And the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by
+invisible fingers, answer: "Happiness is not in us!" And the frozen
+lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the throne of wilted
+flowers, she strikes her bony hands together, and groans: "It is not
+in me!"
+
+
+HAPPINESS IN POVERTY.
+
+That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a
+year--only one thousand--goes to his home, set up three months ago,
+just after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the door; love sits
+with him at the table; love talks over the work of the day; love takes
+down the Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and they
+kneel, and while they are kneeling--right in that plain room, on that
+plain carpet--the angels of God build a throne, not out of flowers
+that perish and fade away, but out of garlands of heaven, wreath on
+top of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then
+the harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one who mounted
+the throne, with eye so bright and brow so fair that the twain knew it
+was Christian Love. And they knelt at the throne, and, putting one
+hand on each head, she blessed them, and said: "Happiness is with me!"
+And that throne of celestial bloom withered not with the passing
+years; and the queen left not the throne till one day the married pair
+felt stricken in years--felt themselves called away, and knew not
+which way to go, and the queen bounded from the throne, and said:
+"Follow me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of everlasting
+love." And so they went up to sing songs of love, and walk on
+pavements of love, and to live together in mansions of love, and to
+rejoice forever in the truth that God is love.
+
+
+
+
+HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.
+
+    "And brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the
+    morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to
+    the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever
+    thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee."--LUKE
+    10:34, 35.
+
+
+This is the good Samaritan paying the hotel bill of a man who had been
+robbed and almost killed by bandits. The good Samaritan had found the
+unfortunate on a lonely, rocky road, where, to this very day,
+depredations are sometimes committed upon travelers, and had put the
+injured man into the saddle, while this merciful and well-to-do man
+had walked till they got to the hotel, and the wounded man was put to
+bed and cared for. It must have been a very superior hotel in its
+accommodations, for, though in the country, the landlord was paid at
+the rate of what in our country would be four or five dollars a day, a
+penny being then a day's wages, and the two pennies paid in this case
+about two days' wages. Moreover, it was one of those kind-hearted
+landlords who are wrapped up in the happiness of their guests, because
+the good Samaritan leaves the poor wounded fellow to his entire care,
+promising that when he came that way again he would pay all the bills
+until the invalid got well.
+
+
+THE VALUE OF HOTELS.
+
+Hotels and boarding-houses are necessities. In very ancient times they
+were unknown, because the world had comparatively few inhabitants, who
+were not much given to travel, and private hospitality met all the
+wants of sojourners, as when Abraham rushed out at Mamre to invite the
+three men to sit down to a dinner of veal; as when the people were
+positively commanded to be given to hospitality; as in many of the
+places in the East these ancient customs are practiced to-day. But we
+have now hotels presided over by good landlords, and boarding-houses
+presided over by excellent host or hostess, in all neighborhoods,
+villages and cities, and it is our congratulation that those of our
+land surpass all other lands. They rightly become the permanent
+residences of many people, such as those who are without families,
+such as those whose business keeps them migratory, such as those who
+ought not, for various reasons of health or peculiarity of
+circumstances, take upon themselves the cares of housekeeping.
+
+
+QUEENLY CATERERS.
+
+Many a man falling sick in one of these boarding-houses or hotels has
+been kindly watched and nursed; and by the memory of her own
+sufferings and losses the lady at the head of such a house has done
+all that a mother could do for a sick child, and the slumberless eye
+of God sees and appreciates her sacrifices in behalf of the stranger.
+Among the most marvelous cases of patience and Christian fidelity are
+many of those who keep boarding-houses, enduring without resentment
+the unreasonable demands of their guests for expensive food and
+attentions for which they are not willing to pay an equivalent--a lot
+of cranky men and women who are not worthy to tie the shoe of their
+queenly caterer. The outrageous way in which boarders sometimes act to
+their landlords and landladies show that these critical guests had bad
+early rearing, and that in the making-up of their natures all that
+constitutes the gentleman and lady were left out. Some of the most
+princely men and some of the most elegant women that I know of to-day
+keep hotels and boarding-houses.
+
+But one of the great evils of this day is found in the fact that a
+large population of our towns and cities are giving up and have given
+up their homes and taken apartments, that they may have more freedom
+from domestic duties and more time for social life, and because they
+like the whirl of publicity better than the quiet and privacy of a
+residence they can call their own. The lawful use of these hotels and
+boarding-houses is for most people while they are in transitu: but as
+a terminus they are in many cases demoralization, utter and complete.
+That is the point at which families innumerable have begun to
+disintegrate. There never has been a time when so many families,
+healthy and abundantly able to support and direct homes of their own,
+have struck tent and taken permanent abode in these public
+establishments. It is an evil wide as Christendom, and by voice and
+through the newspaper press I utter warning and burning protest, and
+ask Almighty God to bless the word, whether in the hearing or reading.
+
+
+PROMOTERS OF GOSSIP.
+
+In these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full
+sway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general
+inspection--how they look when they come down in the morning and when
+they get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they
+receive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do
+not wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat,
+and how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be
+isolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him:
+Who is he? Where did he come from? How long is he going to stay? Has
+he paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some
+crime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong
+about him, or he would speak.
+
+The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out
+about him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his
+door unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been
+inspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the
+way they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the
+question, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a
+monomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but
+minds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot
+sometimes hinder their places from becoming
+
+
+A PANDEMONIUM
+
+of whisperers, and reputations are torn to tatters, and evil
+suspicions are aroused, and scandals started, and the parliament of
+the family is blown to atoms by some Guy Fawkes who was not caught in
+time, as was his English predecessor of gunpowdery reputation.
+
+The reason is that while in private homes families have so much to
+keep them busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences
+there are so many who have nothing to do, and that always makes
+mischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in
+consultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they
+got to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get
+out of breath before reaching there, and not feel in full glow of
+animosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at
+all. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 are on the same corridor, and
+when one carrion crow goes "Caw! Caw!" all the other crows hear it and
+flock together over the same carcass. "Oh, I have heard something
+rich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it." And the first guffaw
+increases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as
+they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other
+circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the
+top room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that
+evening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until
+autumnal fires sweeping across Illinois prairies are less raging and
+swift than that flame of consuming reputation blazing across the
+village or city.
+
+Those of us who were brought up in the country know that the
+old-fashioned hatching of eggs in the hay-mow required four or five
+weeks of brooding, but there are new modes of hatching by machinery,
+which take less time and do the work in wholesale. So, while the
+private home may brood into life an occasional falsity, and take a
+long time to do it, many of the boarding-houses and family hotels
+afford a swifter and more multitudinous style of moral incubation, and
+one old gossip will get off the nest after one hour's brooding,
+clucking a flock of thirty lies after her, each one picking up its
+little worm of juicy regalement. It is no advantage to hear too much
+about your neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking
+care of their faults that you will have no time to look after your
+own. And while you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden yours
+will get all overgrown with horse-sorrel and mullen stalks.
+
+
+A WRONG TO CHILDREN.
+
+One of the worst damages that comes from the herding of so many people
+into boarding-houses and family hotels is inflicted upon children. It
+is only another way of bringing them up on the commons. While you have
+your own private house you can, for the most part, control their
+companionship and their whereabouts; but by twelve years of age in
+these public resorts they will have picked up all the bad things that
+can be furnished by the prurient minds of dozens of people. They will
+overhear blasphemies, and see quarrels, and get precocious in sin,
+and what the bartender does not tell them the porter or hostler or
+bell-boy will.
+
+Beside that, the children will go out into this world without the
+restraining, anchoring, steadying and all-controlling memory of a
+home. From that none of us who have been blessed of such memory have
+escaped. It grips a man for eighty years, if he lives so long. It
+pulls him back from doors into which he otherwise would enter. It
+smites him with contrition in the very midst of his dissipations. As
+the fish already surrounded by
+
+
+THE LONG WIDE NET
+
+swim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as they please, and with
+gay toss of silvery scale they defy the sportsman on the beach, and
+after a while the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over hand,
+and hand over hand, and it is a long while before the captured fins
+begin to feel the net, and then they dart this way and that, hoping to
+get out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up
+to the very feet of the captors, so the memory of an early home
+sometimes seems to relax and let men out further and further from God
+and further and further from shore--five years, ten years, twenty
+years, thirty years; but some day they find an irresistible mesh
+drawing them back, and they are compelled to retreat from their
+prodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to
+escape the impression, and try to dive deeper down in sin, after a
+while are brought clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.
+
+If it be possible, O father and mother! let your sons and daughters go
+out into the world under the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure
+home. About your two or three rooms in a boarding-house or a family
+hotel you can cast no such glorious sanctity. They will think of these
+public caravanseries as an early stopping place, malodorous with old
+victuals, coffees perpetually steaming, and meats in everlasting stew
+or broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along
+which drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning,
+rapping at the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do not be
+guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.
+
+
+WHAT A HOME IS.
+
+A home is four walls enclosing one family with identity of interest,
+and a privacy from outside inspection so complete that it is a world
+in itself, no one entering except by permission--bolted and barred and
+chained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used
+in law books and legal circles is mightily suggestive--every man's
+house is his castle. As much so as though it had drawbridge,
+portcullis, redoubt, bastion and armed turret. Even the officer of the
+law may not enter to serve a writ, except the door be voluntarily
+opened unto him; burglary, or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive
+that the law clashes its iron jaws on any one who attempts it. Unless
+it be necessary to stay for longer or shorter time in family hotel or
+boarding-house--and there are thousands of instances in which it is
+necessary, as I showed you at the beginning--unless in this
+exceptional case, let neither wife nor husband consent to such
+permanent residence.
+
+
+HAZARDOUS TO MORALS.
+
+The probability is that the wife will have to divide her husband's
+time with public smoking or reading room, or with some coquettish
+spider in search of unwary flies; and if you do not entirely lose your
+husband it will be because he is divinely protected from the disasters
+that have whelmed thousands of husbands with as good intentions as
+yours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent
+to such a life unless he is sure his wife can withstand the temptation
+of social dissipation which sweeps across such places with the force
+of the Atlantic Ocean when driven by a September equinox. Many wives
+give up their homes for these public residences so that they may give
+their entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees,
+and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and
+round and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise and shoots
+off into a tangent. But the difference is, in one case it is a top and
+in the other a soul.
+
+
+THE LARES AND PENATES.
+
+Beside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around
+the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while
+the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is
+the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them."
+Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge,
+upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home
+are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to
+arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic
+happiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments
+of a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can
+call your own, and are associated with the different members of your
+household, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic
+history. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have
+been gathering until every figure in the carpet, and every panel of
+the door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its
+own, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or
+daughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it
+becomes when one can say: "In that room such a one was born; in that
+bed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a
+one had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt
+for her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came
+back from a sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was mother's
+rocking chair." What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!
+
+
+HOSPITALITY CURTAILED.
+
+The public residence of hotel and boarding-house abolishes the grace
+of hospitality. Your guest does not want to come to such a table. No
+one wants to run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless
+hyper-criticism. Unless you have a home of your own you will not be
+able to exercise the best rewarded of all the graces. For exercise of
+this grace what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of
+her son to life because she entertained Elisha, and to the widow of
+Zarephath in the perpetual oil well of the miraculous cruise because
+she fed a hungry prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her life
+at the demolition of Jericho because she entertained the spies and to
+Laban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of
+his entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his rescue from the
+destroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary
+and Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because they entertained
+Christ, and to Publius in the island of Melita in the healing of his
+father because of the entertainment of Paul drenched from the
+shipwreck, and of innumerable houses throughout Christendom upon which
+have come blessings from generation to generation because their doors
+swung easily open in the enlarging, ennobling, irradiating, and divine
+grace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has been, but
+I have had men and women visiting at my house who left a benediction
+on every room--in the blessing they asked at the table, in the prayer
+they offered at the family altar, in the good advice they gave the
+children, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament of
+their countenances; and their departure was the sword of bereavement.
+
+The Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had a royal
+
+
+CUP OF TEN CURVES,
+
+or lips, each one having on it the name of the distinguished person
+who had drank from it. And that cup which we offer to others in
+Christian hospitality, though it be of the plainest earthenware, is a
+royal cup, and God can read on all its sides the names of those who
+have taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you
+have a home of your own. It is the delusion as to what is necessary
+for a home that hinders so many from establishing one. Thirty rooms
+are not necessary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor
+three. In the right way plant a table, and couch, and knife and fork,
+and a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a young paradise. Just start
+a home, on however small a scale, and it will grow. When King Cyrus
+was invited to dine with an humble friend the king made the one
+condition of his coming that the only dish be one loaf of bread, and
+the most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the
+plainest fare.
+
+Do not be caught in the delusion of many thousands in postponing a
+home until they can have an expensive one. That idea is the devil's
+trap that catches men and women innumerable who will never have any
+home at all. Capitalists of America, build plain homes for the people.
+Let this tenement-house system, in which hundreds of thousands of the
+people of our cities are wallowing in the mire, be broken up by small
+homes, where people can have their own firesides and their own altar.
+In this great continent there is room enough for every man and woman
+to have a home. Morals and civilization and religion demand it.
+
+
+SMALL HOMES NEEDED
+
+We want done all over this land what George Peabody and Lady
+Burdett-Coutts did in England, and some of the large manufacturers of
+this country have done for the villages and cities, in building small
+houses at cheap rents, so that the middle classes can have separate
+homes. They are the only class not provided for. The rich have their
+palaces, and the poor have their poorhouses, and criminals have their
+jails; but what about the honest middle classes, who are able and
+willing to work, and yet have small income? Let the capitalists,
+inspired of God and pure patriotism, rise and build whole streets of
+small residences. The laborer may have, at the close of the day, to
+walk or ride further than is desirable to reach it, but when he gets
+to his destination in the eventide he will find something worthy of
+being called by that glorious and impassioned and heaven-descended
+word, "home."
+
+
+SOMETHING TO SAVE FOR.
+
+Young married man, as soon as you can buy such a place, even if you
+have to put on it a mortgage reaching from base to cap-stone. The
+much abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent
+and provident is the beginning of a competency and a fortune, for the
+reason he will not be satisfied until he has paid it off, and all the
+household are put on stringent economies until then. Deny yourself all
+superfluities and all luxuries until you can say: "Everything in this
+house is mine, thank God!--every timber, every brick, every foot of
+plumbing, every door-sill." Do not have your children born in a
+boarding-house, and do not yourself be buried from one. Have a place
+where your children can shout and sing and romp without being
+overhauled for the racket. Have a kitchen where you can do something
+toward the reformation of evil cookery and the lessening of this
+nation of dyspeptics. As Napoleon lost one of his great battles by an
+attack of indigestion, so many men have such
+
+
+A DAILY WRESTLE
+
+with the food swallowed that they have no strength left for the battle
+of life; and though your wife may know how to play on all musical
+instruments, and rival a prima donna, she is not well educated unless
+she can boil an Irish potato and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet
+sometimes decides the fate of families and nations.
+
+Have a sitting-room with at least one easy chair, even though you have
+to take turns at sitting in it, and books out of the public library or
+of your own purchase for the making of your family intelligent, and
+checkerboards and guessing matches, with an occasional blind man's
+buff, which is of all games my favorite. Rouse up your home with all
+styles of innocent mirth, and gather up in your children's nature a
+reservoir of exuberance that will pour down refreshing streams when
+life gets parched, and the dark days come, and the lights go out, and
+the laughter is smothered into a sob.
+
+
+CHRIST IN THE HOME.
+
+First, last and all the time, have Christ in your home. Julius Cæsar
+calmed the fears of an affrighted boatman who was rowing him in a
+stream by stating: "So long as Cæsar is with you in the same boat no
+harm can happen." And whatever storm of adversity or bereavement or
+poverty may strike your home all is well as long as you have Christ
+the King on board. Make your home so far-reaching in its influence
+that down to the last moment of your children's life you may hold them
+with a heavenly charm. At seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of
+the American Senate lay dying at Washington--I mean Henry Clay, of
+Kentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside and the "old man eloquent,"
+after a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and
+cis-Atlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept
+saying in his dream over and over again: "My mother! mother! mother!"
+May the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy,
+and so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven, in
+which place may we all meet--father, mother, son, daughter, brother,
+sister, grandfather and grandmother, and grandchild, and the entire
+group of precious ones, of whom we must say in the words of
+transporting Charles Wesley:
+
+    "One family we dwell in Him,
+      One church above, beneath;
+    Though now divided by the stream--
+      The narrow stream of death;
+    One army of the living God,
+      To His command we bow;
+    Part of the host have crossed the flood,
+      And part are crossing now."
+
+
+
+
+EASY DIVORCE.
+
+    "What therefore God hath joined together let not man put
+    asunder."--MATTHEW 19:6
+
+
+That there are hundreds and thousands of infelicitous homes in America
+no one will doubt. If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that
+might be locked up and abandoned; but in many a home there is a
+skeleton in the hallway and a skeleton in all the apartments.
+
+
+"UNHAPPILY MARRIED"
+
+are two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox
+minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a hell; they are
+there now. Sometimes a grand and gracious woman will be thus
+incarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with
+Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a
+consecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or
+united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both
+parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and
+his wife smokes and swears, and Froude, the historian, is mean enough,
+because of the shekels he gets for the manuscript,[3] to pull aside
+the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Five,
+Cheyne Row. Some say that for
+
+
+THE ALLEVIATION
+
+of all these domestic disorders of which we hear, easy divorce is a
+good prescription. God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as He
+authorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully
+divorced as I have for one lawfully married. But you know and I know
+that wholesale divorce is one of
+
+
+OUR NATIONAL SCOURGES.
+
+I am not surprised at this when I think of the influences which have
+been abroad militating against the marriage relation.
+
+For many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about a
+free-love millennium. There were meetings of this kind held in the
+Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Cooper Institute, New York, Tremont
+Temple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most
+prominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great
+promiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the
+tyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women's
+rights, and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short
+curls and short dress and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with
+God because they were created women; while on the platform sat meek
+men with soft accent and cowed demeanor, apologetic for masculinity,
+and holding the parasols while the termagant orators went on preaching
+the gospel of free love.
+
+That campaign of about twenty years set more devils in the marriage
+relation than will be exorcised in the next fifty. Men and women went
+home from such meetings so permanently confused as to who were their
+wives and husbands that they never got out of the perplexity, and the
+criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of woes,
+and this one got alimony, and that one got a limited divorce, and this
+mother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes
+come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went
+into an insane asylum, and those went into dissolute public life, and
+all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the
+marriage institution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one
+name and sometimes under another.
+
+Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been
+
+
+POLYGAMY IN UTAH.
+
+That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has
+poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an
+arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be
+sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of
+the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of
+America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress
+forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where
+they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five
+administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an
+army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked
+from that fortress of libertinism.
+
+Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the
+straw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in
+proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and
+in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen,
+and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any
+time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did
+more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent
+administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and
+although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than
+the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk,
+talk, talk.
+
+I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have
+had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are
+crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already
+with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it
+smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation
+throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of
+iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north,
+south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
+
+Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in
+this country has been a
+
+
+PUSTULOUS LITERATURE,
+
+with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic
+wrongs, and infidelities, and massacres, and outrages, until it is a
+wonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on
+the subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and
+New York and all our cities reeking with the filth.
+
+"Now," say some, "we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear
+them out or correct them is by easy divorce." Well, before we yield to
+that cry, let us find out
+
+
+HOW EASY IT IS NOW.
+
+I have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while
+in some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy.
+The State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of
+proper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts
+the right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it
+expedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that
+in one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833
+divorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look
+over the records of the States. In Massachusetts 600 divorces in one
+year; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces in one
+year; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New
+England in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England
+20,000. Is that not easy enough?
+
+If the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and
+multiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our
+courts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you
+will have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in
+the middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a
+woman will be that her husband's overcoat was buttonless. Causes of
+divorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England,
+and doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have
+to tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces
+to marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to
+thirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?
+
+I want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with
+the dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one
+case of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the
+reign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know
+how rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the
+Reign of Terror was introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce
+in one year in Paris.
+
+
+WHAT WE WANT
+
+in this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more
+and more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will
+be persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except
+through the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge
+of that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and
+that it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more
+marriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with
+the idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can
+get out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken
+out of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more
+joking about the blossoms in a bride's hair than about the cypress on
+a coffin.
+
+What we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present
+session move for the changing the national Constitution so that a law
+can be passed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what
+shall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what
+is wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.
+
+
+HOW IS IT NOW?
+
+If a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only
+necessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the
+domestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party
+knows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody,
+on April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of
+the household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a
+business excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride's house. No cards.
+There are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the
+disintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States,
+like our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making
+marriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.
+
+The Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session
+for a change of the National Constitution, and then to appoint a
+committee--not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and
+their families in Washington--who shall prepare a good, honest,
+righteous, comprehensive,
+
+
+UNIFORM LAW
+
+that will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will
+put an end to brokerages in marriage. That will send divorce lawyers
+into a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years
+on the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning
+how they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable
+circumstances.
+
+More difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon
+marriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the
+relation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The
+female to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly
+unattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody
+knows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through
+the commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how
+much estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out
+how long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can
+stand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the
+relation; for he says, "If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce
+law I'll back out." That process is going on all the time, and men
+enter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection,
+and it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that
+transpired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and
+Lackawanna.
+
+Now, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he
+goes into that relation there is no possibility of his getting out,
+or no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.
+He should say to himself, "Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a
+whole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of
+sunshine and gardens of peace."
+
+Rigorous divorce law will also hinder women from
+
+
+THE FATAL MISTAKE
+
+of marrying men to reform them. If a young man by twenty-five years of
+age or thirty years of age has the habit of strong drink fixed on him,
+he is as certainly bound for a drunkard's grave as that a train
+starting out from Grand Central Depot at 8 o'clock to-morrow morning
+is bound for Albany. The train may not reach Albany, for it may be
+thrown from the track. The young man may not reach a drunkard's grave,
+for something may throw him off the iron track of evil habit; but the
+probability is that the train that starts to-morrow morning at 8
+o'clock for Albany will get there and the probability is that the
+young man who has the habit of strong drink fixed on him before
+twenty-five or thirty years of age will arrive at a drunkard's grave.
+She knows he drinks, although he tries to hide it by chewing cloves.
+Everybody knows he drinks. Parents warn, neighbors and friends warn.
+She will marry him, she will reform him.
+
+If she is unsuccessful in the experiment, why then the divorce law
+will emancipate her, because habitual drunkenness is a cause for
+divorce in Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, and nearly all the
+States. So the poor thing goes to the altar of sacrifice. If you will
+show me the poverty-struck streets in any city I will show you the
+homes of the women who married men to reform them. In one case out of
+ten thousand it may be a successful experiment. I never saw the
+successful experiment. But have a rigorous divorce law, and that woman
+will say, "If I am affianced to that man it is for life; and if now in
+the ardor of his young love, and I am the prize to be won, he will not
+give up his cups, when he has won the prize, surely he will not give
+up his cups." And so that woman will say to the man, "No, sir, you are
+already married to the club, and you are married to that evil habit,
+and so you are married twice, and you are a bigamist. Go!"
+
+A rigorous divorce law will also do much to hinder hasty and
+
+
+INCONSIDERATE MARRIAGES.
+
+Under the impression that one can be easily released people enter the
+relation without inquiry and without reflection. Romance and impulse
+rule the day. Perhaps the only ground for the marriage compact is that
+she likes his looks and he admires the graceful way she passes around
+the ice cream at the picnic! It is all they know about each other. It
+is all the preparation for life. A man not able to pay his own board
+bill, with not a dollar in his possession, will stand at the altar and
+take the loving hand, and say, "With all my worldly goods I thee
+endow!" A woman that could not make a loaf of bread to save her life
+will swear to cherish and obey. A Christian will marry an atheist, and
+that always makes conjoined wretchedness; for if a man does not
+believe there is a God, he is neither to be trusted with a dollar nor
+with your lifelong happiness.
+
+Having read much about love in a cottage people brought up in ease
+will go and starve in a hovel. Runaway matches and elopements, 999 out
+of 1000 of which mean death and hell, multiplying on all hands. You
+see them in every day's newspapers. Our ministers in this region have
+no defence such as they have in other cities where the banns must be
+previously published and an officer of the law must give a certificate
+that all is right; so clergymen are left defenceless, and unite those
+who ought never to be united. Perhaps they are too young or perhaps
+they are standing already in some domestic compact.
+
+By the wreck of ten thousand homes, by the holocaust of ten thousand
+sacrificed men and women, by the hearthstone of the family which is
+the corner-stone of the State, and in the name of that God who hath
+set up the family institution and who hath made the breaking of the
+marital oath the most appalling of all perjuries, I implore the
+Congress of the United States to make some righteous, uniform law for
+all the States and from ocean to ocean, on this subject of marriage
+and divorce.
+
+
+ADVICE TO LOVERS.
+
+Let me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning,
+before you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution;
+inquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the
+taste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take
+the heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put
+your lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation
+for being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who
+dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God
+wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more
+celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that
+Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.
+Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has
+been or ever will be, is good character.
+
+
+ASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL
+
+in this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They
+are the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you
+than any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your
+happiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,
+
+
+ASK GOD.
+
+I used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about
+to offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong
+companion, he opened the conversation by saying, "Let us pray." But I
+have seen so many shipwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up
+my mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in
+prayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and
+poverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all
+the path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with
+its wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last
+farewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam
+and Eve, parted.
+
+And let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or
+woman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to
+the Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through
+difference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your
+mind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear,
+remembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who
+have been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and
+immediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green grass on
+quiet graves. And perhaps, my brother, my sister, perhaps you may
+appreciate each other better in heaven than you have appreciated each
+other on earth.
+
+In the "Farm Ballads" our American poet puts into the lips of a
+repentant husband after a life of married perturbation these
+suggestive words:
+
+    "And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,
+    And lying together in silence, perhaps we will agree.
+    And if ever we meet in heaven, I would not think it queer
+    If we love each other better because we quarrelled here."
+
+And let me say to those of you who are in happy married union,
+
+
+AVOID FIRST QUARRELS;
+
+have no unexplained correspondence with former admirers; cultivate no
+suspicions; in a moment of bad temper do not rush out and tell the
+neighbors; do not let any of those gad-abouts of society unload in
+your house their baggage of gab and tittle-tattle; do not stand on
+your rights; learn how to apologize; do not be so proud, or so
+stubborn, or so devilish that you will not make up. Remember that the
+worst domestic misfortunes and most scandalous divorce cases started
+from little infelicities. The whole piled-up train of ten rail cars
+telescoped and smashed at the foot of an embankment one hundred feet
+down came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the
+track. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest
+resounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings
+that were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability,
+and religion, and immortal soul went down in the crash, crash!
+
+And, fellow-citizens as well as fellow-Christians, let us have a
+divine rage against anything that wars on the marriage state. Blessed
+institution! Instead of two arms to fight the battle of life, four.
+Instead of two eyes to scrutinize the path of life, four. Instead of
+two shoulders to lift the burden of life, four. Twice the energy,
+twice the courage, twice the holy ambition, twice the probability of
+worldly success, twice the prospects of heaven. Into that matrimonial
+bower God fetches two souls. Outside the bower room for all
+contentions, and all bickerings, and all controversies, but inside
+that bower there is room for only one guest--the angel of love. Let
+that angel stand at the floral doorway of this Edenic bower with drawn
+sword to hew down the worst foe of that bower--easy divorce. And for
+every Paradise lost may there be a Paradise regained. And after we
+quit our home here may we have a brighter home in heaven at the
+windows of which this moment are familiar faces watching for our
+arrival and wondering why so long we tarry.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Dr. Talmage, in common with many critics, here censures Mr. James
+Anthony Froude for making the disclosures. It is, however, due to that
+eminent historian to say that he gives a different explanation of his
+motives than that suggested by Dr. Talmage of a regard for "shekels." He
+states that as Mr. Carlyle had selected him as his biographer and given
+the materials for the work into his hands, he conceived that his duty as
+a conscientious man was to tell the whole truth. He did it also as a
+matter of policy as well as of principle. Had he kept back any part, it
+would have been told with less accuracy by others who knew some of the
+facts but not all of them.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MATERNITY.
+
+    "Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to
+    him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to
+    offer the yearly sacrifice."--I SAMUEL 2:19.
+
+
+The stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt to discourage a
+woman's soul. She says within herself: "It is impossible that I ever
+can achieve any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean to try;"
+as though a child should refuse to play the eight notes because he
+cannot execute a "William Tell." This Hannah of the text differs from
+the persons I just now named. She was an ordinary woman, with ordinary
+intellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circumstances, and yet,
+by extraordinary piety, standing out before all the ages to come.
+
+
+THE MODEL CHRISTIAN MOTHER.
+
+Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a person very much like
+herself--unromantic and plain, never having fought a battle or been
+the subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them would have been
+called a genius. Just what you and I might be, that was Elkanah and
+Hannah. The brightest time in all the history of that family was the
+birth of Samuel. Although no star ran along the heavens pointing down
+to his birthplace, I think the angels of God stooped at the coming of
+so wonderful a prophet.
+
+As Samuel had been given in answer to prayer, Elkanah and all his
+family, save Hannah, started up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices of
+thanksgiving. The cradle where the child slept was altar enough for
+Hannah's grateful heart, but when the boy was old enough she took him
+to Shiloh and took three bullocks, and an ephah of flour, and a bottle
+of wine, and made offering of sacrifice unto the Lord, and there,
+according to a previous vow, she left him; for there he was to stay
+all the days of his life, and minister in the tabernacle.
+
+Years rolled on, and every year Hannah made with her own hands a
+garment for Samuel, and took it over to him. The lad would have got
+along well without that garment, for I suppose he was well clad by the
+ministry of the temple; but Hannah could not be contented unless she
+was all the time doing something for her darling boy. "Moreover his
+mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to
+year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly
+sacrifice."
+
+I. Hannah stands before you, then, in the first place, as
+
+
+AN INDUSTRIOUS MOTHER.
+
+There was no need for her to work. Elkanah, her husband, was far from
+poor. He belonged to a distinguished family; for the Bible tells us
+that he was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the
+son of Zuph. "Who were they?" you say. I do not know; but they were
+distinguished people, no doubt, or their names would not have been
+mentioned.
+
+Hannah might have seated herself with her family, and, with folded
+arms and dishevelled hair, read novels from year to year, if there had
+been any to read; but when I see her making that garment, and taking
+it over to Samuel, I know she is industrious from principle as well as
+from pleasure. God would not have a mother become a drudge or a slave;
+He would have her employ all the helps possible in this day in the
+rearing of her children. But Hannah ought never to be ashamed to be
+found making a coat for Samuel.
+
+Most mothers need no counsel in this direction. The wrinkles on their
+brow, the pallor on their cheek, the thimble-mark on their finger,
+attest that they are faithful in their maternal duties. The bloom, and
+the brightness, and the vivacity of girlhood have given place for the
+grander dignity, and usefulness, and industry of motherhood. But there
+is
+
+
+A HEATHENISH IDEA
+
+getting abroad in some of the families of Americans; there are mothers
+who banish themselves from the home circle. For three fourths of their
+maternal duties they prove themselves incompetent. They are ignorant
+of what their children wear, and what their children eat, and what
+their children read. They intrust to irresponsible persons these young
+immortals, and allow them to be under influences which may cripple
+their bodies, or taint their purity, or spoil their manners, or
+destroy their souls.
+
+From the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you know his mother Hannah did not
+make it. Out from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported
+carpets, and down the granite stairs, there has come a great crowd of
+children in this day, untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical
+duties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl of crime and
+sensuality. Indolent and unfaithful mothers will make indolent and
+unfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in any house
+where the daughters see nothing but slatternness and upsidedownativeness
+in their parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly Samuel will
+grow up idle.
+
+Who are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions?
+Who are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the
+walls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets, making the laws,
+governing the nations, making the earth to quake, and heave, and roar,
+and rattle with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are they? For
+the most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old
+homestead, used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own carpets,
+and plait their own door-mats, and flag their own chairs, and do their
+own work. The stalwart men and the
+
+
+INFLUENTIAL WOMEN
+
+of this day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came from such an
+illustrious ancestry of hard knuckles and homespun.
+
+And who are these people in society, light as froth, blown every
+whither of temptation and fashion--the peddlers of filthy stories, the
+dancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the
+tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of low wink, and filthy
+chuckle, and brass breast-pins, and rotten associations? For the most
+part, they came from mothers idle and disgusting--the scandal-mongers
+of society, going from house to house, attending to everybody's
+business but their own, believing in witches, and ghosts, and
+horseshoes to keep the devil out of the churn, and by a godless life
+setting their children on the very verge of hell. The mothers of
+Samuel Johnson, and of Alfred the Great, and Isaac Newton, and of St.
+Augustine, and of Richard Cecil, and of President Edwards, for the
+most part were industrious, hard-working mothers.
+
+Now, while I congratulate all Christian mothers upon the wealth and
+the modern science which may afford them all kinds of help, let me say
+that every mother ought to be observant of her children's walk, her
+children's behavior, her children's food, her children's looks, her
+children's companionships. However much help Hannah may have, I think
+she ought every year, at least, make one garment for Samuel. The Lord
+have mercy on the man who is so unfortunate as to have had a lazy
+mother!
+
+II. Again, Hannah stands before you as
+
+
+AN INTELLIGENT MOTHER.
+
+From the way in which she talked in this chapter, and from the way she
+managed this boy, you know she was intelligent. There are no persons
+in the community who need to be so wise and well-informed as mothers.
+
+Oh, this work of culture in children for this world and the next! This
+child is timid, and it must be roused up and pushed out into
+activity. This child is forward, and he must be held back and tamed
+down into modesty and politeness. Rewards for one, punishments for
+another. That which will make George will ruin John. The rod is
+necessary in one case, while a frown of displeasure is more than
+enough in another. Whipping and a dark closet do not exhaust all the
+rounds of domestic discipline. There have been children who have grown
+up and gone to glory without ever having had their ears boxed.
+
+Oh, how much care and intelligence are necessary in the rearing of
+children! But in this day, when there are so many books on the
+subject, no parent is excusable in being ignorant of the best mode of
+
+
+BRINGING UP A CHILD.
+
+If parents knew more of dietetics there would not be so many dyspeptic
+stomachs and weak nerves and inactive livers among children. If
+parents knew more of physiology there would not be so many curved
+spines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as
+there are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in
+sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many
+children coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents
+knew more of Christ, and practised more of His religion, there would
+not be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all
+around us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such
+ecstasy of infernal triumph.
+
+The eaglets in the eyrie have no advantages over the eaglets of a
+thousand years ago; the kids have no superior way of climbing up the
+rocks than the old goats taught hundreds of years ago; the whelps know
+no more now than did the whelps of ages ago--they are taught no more
+by the lions of the desert; but it is a shame that in this day, when
+there are so many opportunities of improving ourselves in the best
+manner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more
+advancement in this respect than there has been among the kids and the
+eaglets and the whelps.
+
+III. Again, Hannah stands before you as
+
+
+A CHRISTIAN MOTHER.
+
+From her prayers and from the way she consecrated her boy to God, I
+know that she was good. A mother may have the finest culture, the most
+brilliant surroundings; but she is not fit for her duties unless she
+be a Christian mother. There may be well-read libraries in the house,
+and exquisite music in the parlor, and the canvases of the best
+artists adorning the walls, and the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful
+apparel, and the children be wonderful for their attainments, and
+make the house ring with laughter and innocent mirth, but there is
+something woeful-looking in that house if it be not also the residence
+of a Christian mother.
+
+I bless God that there are not many prayerless mothers--not many of
+them. The weight of the responsibility is so great that they feel the
+need of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a
+divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into
+the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were
+hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been
+for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the
+nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to
+raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a
+Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian?
+Lord, help me!" Are there
+
+
+ANXIOUS MOTHERS
+
+who know nothing of the infinite help of religion? Then I commend to
+them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely
+impossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such
+fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime
+gets its victims--extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out
+the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and
+shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding
+and blasting and burning with shame and woe.
+
+Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that
+child shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal
+harmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of
+joy in heaven; or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and,
+after a life of wrong-doing on earth, it shall go to a home of
+impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being
+decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson and evening prayer and walk
+and ride and look and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory,
+crowding all the battlements, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna,
+brought to God through Christian parentage!
+
+One hundred and twenty clergymen were together, and they were telling
+their experience and their ancestry; and of the one hundred and twenty
+clergymen, how many of them, do you suppose, assigned as the means of
+their conversion the influence of a Christian mother? One hundred out
+of the one hundred and twenty! Philip Doddridge was brought to God by
+the Scripture lesson on the Dutch tiles of a chimney fireplace. The
+mother thinks she is only rocking a child, but at the same time she
+may be rocking the fate of nations, rocking the glories of heaven. The
+same maternal power that may lift the child up may press a child down.
+
+A daughter came to
+
+
+A WORLDLY MOTHER
+
+and said she was anxious about her sins, and she had been praying all
+night. The mother said: "Oh, stop praying! I don't believe in praying.
+Get over all these religious notions and I'll give you a dress that
+will cost $500, and you may wear it next week to that party." The
+daughter took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle the gayest of
+all the gay, that night; and sure enough all the religious impressions
+were gone and she stopped praying. A few months after she came to die,
+and in her closing moments said: "Mother, I wish you would bring me
+that dress that cost $500." The mother thought it a very strange
+request, but she brought it to please the dying child. "Now," said the
+daughter, "mother, hang that dress on the foot of my bed," and the
+dress was hung there, on the foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got
+up on one elbow and looked at her mother, and then pointed to the
+dress, and said: "Mother, that dress is the price of my soul." Oh,
+what a momentous thing it is to be a mother!
+
+IV. Again, and lastly, Hannah stands before you
+
+
+THE REWARDED MOTHER.
+
+For all the coats she made for Samuel, for all the prayers she offered
+for him, for the discipline exerted over him she got abundant
+compensation in the piety and the usefulness and the popularity of her
+son Samuel; and that is true in all ages. Every mother gets full pay
+for all the prayers and tears in behalf of her children. That man
+useful in commercial life; that man prominent in a profession; that
+master mechanic--why, every step he takes in life has an echo of
+gladness in the old heart that long ago taught him to be a Christian,
+and heroic and earnest.
+
+The story of what you have done, or what you have written, of the
+influence you exerted, has gone back to the old homestead--for there
+is some one always ready to carry good tidings--and that story makes
+the needle in the old mother's tremulous hand fly quicker, and the
+flail in the father's hand come down on the barn floor with a vigorous
+thump. Parents love to hear good news from their children. Do you send
+them good news always?
+
+Look out for the young man who speaks of his father as "the governor,"
+the "squire," or the "old chap." Look out for the young woman who
+calls her mother her "maternal ancestor," or the "old woman." "The eye
+that mocketh at his father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it."
+
+God grant that all these parents may have the great satisfaction of
+seeing their children grow up Christians. But, oh! the pang of that
+mother, who, after a life of street gadding and gossip retailing,
+hanging on the children the fripperies and follies of this world, sees
+those children tossed out on the sea of life like foam on the wave, or
+nonentities in a world where only bravery and stalwart character can
+stand the shock! But blessed be the mother who looks upon her children
+as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
+
+Oh! the satisfaction of Hannah in seeing Samuel serving at the altar;
+of Mother Eunice in seeing her Timothy learned in the Scriptures. That
+is the mother's recompense, to see children coming up useful in the
+world, reclaiming the lost, healing the sick, pitying the ignorant,
+earnest and useful in every sphere. That throws a new light back on
+the old family Bible whenever she reads it, and that will be ointment
+to soothe the aching limbs of decrepitude, and light up the closing
+hours of life's day with the glories of an autumnal sunset!
+
+There she sits,
+
+
+THE OLD CHRISTIAN MOTHER,
+
+ripe for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the
+celestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn
+has struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the
+wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care
+she used to carry for her children. She sits at home, too old to find
+her way to the house of God; but while she sits there, all the past
+comes back, and the children that forty years ago tripped around her
+armchair with their griefs and joys and sorrows--those children are
+gone now. Some caught up into a better realm, where they shall never
+die, and others out in the broad world, testing the excellency of a
+Christian mother's discipline. Her last days are full of peace; and
+calmer and sweeter will her spirit become, until the gates of life
+shall lift and let in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide and
+youth, where the limbs never ache, and the eyes never grow dim, and
+the staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm
+of the immortal athlete!
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.
+
+    "Whose son art thou, thou young man?"--SAMUEL 17:58.
+
+
+Never was there a more unequal fight than that between David and
+Goliath. David five feet high; Goliath ten. David a shepherd boy,
+brought up amid rural scenes; Goliath a warrior by profession. Goliath
+a mountain of braggadocia; David a marvel of humility. Goliath armed
+with an iron spear; David armed with a sling with smooth stones from
+the brook. But you are not to despise these latter weapons. There was
+a regiment of slingers in the Assyrian army and a regiment of slingers
+in the Egyptian army, and they made terrible execution, and they could
+cast a stone with as much precision and force as now can be hurled
+shot or shell. The Greeks in their army had slingers who would throw
+leaden plummets inscribed with the irritating words: "Take this!" So
+it was a mighty weapon David employed in that famous combat.
+
+A Jewish rabbi says that the probability is that Goliath was in such
+contempt for David, that in a paroxysm of laughter he threw his head
+back, and his helmet fell off, and David saw the uncovered forehead,
+and his opportunity had come, and taking his sling and swinging it
+around his head two or three times, and aiming at that uncovered
+forehead, he crushed it in like an egg-shell. The battle over,
+
+
+BEHOLD A TABLEAU:
+
+King Saul sitting, little David standing, his fingers clutched into
+the hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there
+holding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of
+the complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what
+parentage was honored by such heroism, and in my text he asks David
+his pedigree: "Whose son art thou, thou young man?"
+
+The king saw what you and I see, that this question of heredity is a
+mighty question. The longer I live the more
+
+
+I BELIEVE IN BLOOD
+
+--good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble blood, honest blood,
+thieving blood, heroic blood, cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a
+generation or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a little child
+you sometimes see a similarity to a great-grandfather whose picture
+hangs on the wall. That the physical and mental and moral qualities
+are inheritable is patent to any one who keeps his eyes open. The
+similarity is so striking sometimes as to be amusing. Great families,
+regal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down
+through the generations, and what is more perceptible in such families
+may be seen on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand years have
+no power to obliterate the difference.
+
+
+ROYAL RASCALS.
+
+The large lip of the House of Austria is seen in all the generations,
+and is called the Hapsburg lip. The House of Stuart always means in
+all generations cruelty and bigotry and sensuality. Witness Queen of
+Scotts. Witness Charles I. and Charles II. Witness James I. and James
+II. and all the other scoundrels of that imperial line.
+
+Scottish blood means persistence, English blood means reverence for
+the ancient, Welsh blood means religiosity, Danish blood means
+fondness for the sea, Indian blood means roaming disposition, Celtic
+blood means fervidity, Roman blood means conquest.
+
+The Jewish facility for accumulation you may trace clear back to
+Abraham, of whom the Bible says "he was rich in silver and gold and
+cattle," and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same
+
+
+FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+Some families are characterized by longevity, and they have a tenacity
+of life positively Methuselahish. Others are characterized by
+Goliathian stature, and you can see it for one generation, two
+generations, five generations, in all the generations. Vigorous
+theology runs on in the line of the Alexanders. Tragedy runs on in the
+family of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of the
+Trollopes. Philanthropy runs on in the line of the Wilberforces.
+Statesmanship runs on in the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catharine
+of Navarre religious, all their families religious. The celebrated
+family of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the
+Medici--grandfather, son and Catharine--all remarkable for keen
+intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.
+
+This law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or
+political condition, for you sometimes find the ignoble in high place
+and the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll
+gatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door-keeper. A descendant of
+the Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest
+families of England are extinct, while some of those most honored in
+the peerage go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough
+exterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or
+political condition.
+
+Then you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having
+full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William
+is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be
+set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you
+not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the
+generation of the righteous," of "the generation of vipers," of an
+"untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of
+the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
+generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a
+projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son art thou, thou
+young man?"
+
+"Well," says some one, "that theory discharges me from all
+responsibility. Born of sanctified parents we are bound to be good and
+we cannot help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage we are bound
+to be evil and we cannot help ourselves."
+
+
+TWO INACCURACIES.
+
+As much as if you should say, "The centripetal force in nature has a
+tendency to bring everything to the centre, and therefore all things
+come to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to
+throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will
+go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make
+the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the
+centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide
+of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as
+in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President
+Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the
+scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
+ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of
+this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not
+be courteous to speak in their presence.
+
+
+YOUR DUTY.
+
+The practical and useful object of this sermon is to show to you that
+if you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound
+to preserve and develop the glorious inheritance; or if you have come
+of a depraved ancestry, then it is your duty to brace yourself against
+the evil tendency by all prayer and Christian determination, and you
+are to find out what are the family frailties, and in arming the
+castle put the strongest guard at the weakest gate. With these smooth
+stones from the brook I hope to strike you, not where David struck
+Goliath, in the head, but where Nathan struck David, in the heart.
+"Whose son art thou, thou young man?"
+
+There is something in the periodical holidays to bring up
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS.
+
+Sometime in the winter holiday, when we are accustomed to gather our
+families together, old times have come back again, and our thoughts
+have been set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." The old folks were so
+busy at such times in making us happy, and perhaps on less resource
+made their sons and daughters happier than you on larger resource are
+able to make your sons and daughters happy. The snow lay two feet
+above their graves, but they shook off the white blankets and mingled
+in the holiday festivities--the same wrinkles, the same stoop of
+shoulder under the weight of age, the same old style of dress or coat,
+the same smile, the same tones of voice. I hope you remember them
+before they went away. If not, I hope there are those who have recited
+to you what they were, and that there may be in your house some
+article of dress or furniture with which you associate their memories.
+I want to arouse the most sacred memories of your heart while I make
+the impassioned interrogatory in regard to your pedigree: "Whose son
+art thou, thou young man?"
+
+I. First, I accost all those who are descended of a
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ANCESTRY.
+
+I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people
+now, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps
+there was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised
+you. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved,
+and perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But
+you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.
+From what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the
+family altar and at neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had
+invited God into their heart and life. There was something that
+sustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about
+their destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as
+certainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+That early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when
+you got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the
+fresh air because you thought your mother was looking at you. You
+have never been very happy in sin because of a sweet old face that
+would present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you
+until they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who
+spoke. There was an estate not mentioned in the last will and
+testament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian
+entreaty and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to
+hear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold,
+and it was share and share alike. But there was
+
+
+AN UNWRITTEN WILL
+
+that read something like this: "In the name of God, Amen. I, being of
+sound mind, bequeath to my children all my prayers for their
+salvation; I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's toil; I
+bequeath to them the Christian religion which has been so much comfort
+to me, and I hope may be solace for them; I bequeath to them a hope of
+reunion when the partings of life are over; share and share alike may
+they have in eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that they may
+avoid my errors and copy anything that may have been worthy. In the
+name of the God who made me, and the Christ who redeemed me, and the
+Holy Ghost who sanctifies me, I make this my last will and testament.
+Witness, all ye hosts of heaven. Witness, time, witness, eternity.
+Signed, sealed, and delivered in this our dying hour. Father and
+Mother."
+
+You did not get that will proved at the surrogate's office; but I take
+it out to-day and I read it to you; I take it out of the alcoves of
+your heart; I shake the dust off it, I ask you will you accept that
+inheritance, or will you break the will? O ye of Christian ancestry,
+you have a responsibility vast beyond all measurement! God will not
+let you off with just being as good as ordinary people when you had
+such extraordinary advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a
+hot-house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm?
+Ought not a factory turned by the Housatonic do more work than a
+factory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought not you of
+great early opportunity be better than those who had a cradle
+unblessed?
+
+
+THE CAPITAL ACCOUNT.
+
+A father sets his son up in business. He keeps an account of all the
+expenditures. So much for store fixtures, so much for rent, so much
+for this, so much for that, and all the items aggregated, and the
+father expects the son to give an account. Your heavenly Father
+charges against you all the advantages of a pious ancestry--so many
+prayers, so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties--all these
+gracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an
+account of it.
+
+Ought not you to be better than those who had no such advantages?
+Better have been a foundling picked up off the city commons than with
+such magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn out
+indifferently.
+
+Ought not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture,
+than that man who can truly say this morning: "The first word I
+remember my father speaking to me was an oath; the first time I
+remember my father taking hold of me was in wrath; I never saw a Bible
+till I was ten years of age, and then I was told it was a pack of
+lies. The first twenty years of my life I was associated with the
+vicious. I seemed to be walled in by sin and death." Now, my brother,
+ought you not--I leave it as a matter of fairness with you--ought you
+not to be far better than those who had no early Christian influence?
+
+Standing as you do between the generation that is past and the
+generation that is to come, are you going to pass the blessing on, or
+are you going to have your life the gulf in which that tide of
+blessing shall drop out of sight forever? You are
+
+
+THE TRUSTEE OF PIETY
+
+in that ancestral line, and are you going to augment or squander that
+solemn trust fund? are you going to disinherit your sons and daughters
+of the heirloom which your parents left you? Ah! that cannot be
+possible, that cannot be possible that you are going to take such a
+position as that. You are very careful about the life insurances, and
+careful about the deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful
+about the title of your property, because when you step off the stage
+you want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision that
+they shall get grandfather and grandmother's religion? Oh, what a last
+will and testament you are making, my brother! "In the name of God,
+Amen. I, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. I
+bequeath to my children all the money I ever made and all the houses I
+own; but I disinherit them, I rob them of the ancestral grace and the
+Christian influence that I inherited. I have squandered that on my own
+worldliness. Share and share alike must they in the misfortune and the
+everlasting outrage. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of
+God and men and angels and devils and all the generations of earth
+and heaven and hell, March, 1886."
+
+O ye of highly favored ancestry, wake up this morning to a sense of
+your opportunity and your responsibility. I think there must be
+
+
+AN OLD CRADLE,
+
+or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of
+midnight supplication in your behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair
+in which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is
+the old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that
+awful night when there were but three of you awake--you and God and
+mother? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old
+family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: "My son,
+my daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us
+all our lives and to whom we commended you in our prayers living and
+dying? By the memory of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our
+dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our
+spirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf for the new year."
+Oh, the power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a young man of
+New York who attended a prayer-meeting one night and asked for
+prayer, and then went home and wrote down these words:
+
+
+AN ENTRY IN A DIARY.
+
+"Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother went to heaven, my
+beautiful, blessed mother, and I have been alone, tossed up and down
+upon the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I ever go to
+heaven? She told me I must meet her in heaven. When she took her boy's
+hand in hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me, and gazed
+earnestly and long into my face, and then lifted them to heaven in
+that last prayer, she prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder
+if I ever shall.
+
+"My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed mother's prayers! Did ever
+boy have such a mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have not
+heard her pray until to-night. I have heard all her prayers over
+again. They have had, in fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she
+was wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so
+importunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a
+Christian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a
+cheerful and happy Christian. There is
+
+
+"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.
+
+"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect
+her precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.
+How often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain
+for your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in
+vain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much
+instruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to
+heaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
+trusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never
+doubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
+mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made
+myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a
+Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of
+existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no
+rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all
+away from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish."
+
+Do you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:
+"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and
+goodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and all I am I
+consecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?" Oh, the power of
+ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!
+
+II. But I turn for a moment to those who had
+
+
+EVIL PARENTAGE,
+
+and I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven and the
+mightiest triumphs and the brightest crowns will be for those who had
+evil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as
+splendid a gentleman as I know of to-day had for father a man who died
+blaspheming God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their
+ears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful
+Christian ministers of to-day was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide
+of evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and
+yet men have clung to a rock and been rescued.
+
+There is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many
+millions that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate sent
+back a paper of tacks because they were two cents more than he
+expected. Grip and grind and gouge in the fourth generation--I suppose
+it will be grip and grind and gouge in the twentieth generation. The
+thirst for intoxicants has burned down through the arteries of a
+hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other
+families. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes another form of evil.
+But
+
+
+IT MAY BE RESISTED,
+
+it has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate
+unselfishness and charity, and teach your children never to eat an
+apple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty
+combativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and
+never answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred
+both ways, and after you have written an angry letter keep it a week
+before you send it, and then burn it up! Is the family frailty
+timidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography of
+brave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you cannot get a little iron
+in your blood. Find out what the family frailty is, and set body, mind
+and soul in battle array.
+
+
+CONQUER YOUR WILL.
+
+I think the genealogical table was put in the first chapter of the New
+Testament, not only to show our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a
+man may rise up in an ancestral line and beat back successfully all
+the influences of bad heredity. See in that genealogical table that
+good King Asa came of vile King Abia. See in that genealogical table
+that Joseph and Mary and the most illustrious Being that ever touched
+our world, or ever will touch it, had in their ancestral line
+scandalous Rehoboam and Tamar and Bathsheba. If this world is ever to
+be Edenized--and it will be--all the infected families of the earth
+are to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each family
+line and open a new genealogical table. There will be some Joseph in
+the line to reverse the evil influence of Rehoboam, and there will be
+some Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence of Bathsheba.
+Perhaps the star of hope may point down to your manger. Perhaps you
+are to be the hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes and
+stop that long train of genealogical tendencies and switch it off on
+another track from that on which it has been running for a century.
+You do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace as the architects
+of heaven can build, the archway inscribed with the words: "More than
+conqueror."
+
+
+ADOPTED CHILDREN.
+
+But whatever your heredity, let me say, you may be sons and daughters
+of the Lord God Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come
+back through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in our
+veins. There are crowns in our escutcheon. Our Father is King. Our
+Brother is King. We may be kings and queens unto God forever. Come and
+sit down on the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in the
+fountains that fall into the basins of crystal and alabaster. Come and
+look out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and
+amaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while you banquet with
+potentates and victors. Oh, when the text sweeps backward, let it not
+stop at the cradle that rocked your infancy, but at the cradle that
+rocked the first world, and when the text sweeps forward, let it not
+stop at your grave, but at the throne on which you may reign forever
+and ever! "Whose son art thou, thou young man?" Son of God! Heir of
+mortality! Take your inheritance!
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF ALL.
+
+    "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
+    slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh
+    instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from
+    man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man."--GENESIS
+    2:21, 22.
+
+
+It is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever
+since sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings
+and scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and
+ornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air
+in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions
+walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday
+afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach
+all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this
+paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of
+
+
+A CORRESPONDING INTELLIGENCE
+
+just landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I
+speak--Eve, the first, the fairest and the best.
+
+I make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border
+them with pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and
+there are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple
+under the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon,
+and orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There
+are woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred
+spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees
+the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the
+brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp
+and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and
+death as compared with
+
+
+THE RESIDENCE OF THE WOMAN
+
+of the text, the subject of my morning story. Never since have such
+skies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has
+river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the
+Havilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddakel, even the pebbles being bdellium
+and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What
+flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost
+to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the
+grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's
+hum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness and love and joy.
+
+Right there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred
+
+
+THE FIRST MARRIAGE.
+
+Adam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and pronounced
+the ceremony when he said: "Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh."
+
+
+A FORBIDDEN TREE
+
+stood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day
+alone looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders
+if it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says:
+"I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage
+to the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it
+down to examine it." She examined the fruit. She said: "I do not think
+there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it." She put the
+fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the
+fruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let
+the heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the
+hills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep,
+hell-rending howl:
+
+
+"THE WORLD IS LOST!"
+
+Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw, and
+sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds
+troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass.
+Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are
+snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents
+turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted
+myriads of a ruined race.
+
+Do you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated
+
+
+INQUISITIVENESS?
+
+She wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six
+thousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity. Healthy
+curiosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science and
+for religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the
+geologist and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of
+nature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the
+antiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried
+Herculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulchre there came up
+shaft and terrace and amphitheatre. Healthful curiosity has enlarged
+the telescopic vision of the astronomer until worlds hidden in the
+distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising
+the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassoed with
+resplendent law.
+
+
+HEALTHFUL CURIOSITY
+
+has gone down and found the tracks of the eternal God in the polypi
+and the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah
+encamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the
+spots on the sun, and the larvæ in a beech leaf, and the light under
+fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from
+Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculæ that make up the
+phosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and
+spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march
+of God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces
+that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and
+shuttles--forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the
+mountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and
+booms, with strange mechanism, and ships with nostrils of hot steam
+and yokes of fire draw the continents together.
+
+I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden
+jars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles, and
+other magnifying glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the
+natural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God
+for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the
+mechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zoölogical curiosity of
+Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that
+unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and
+tens of thousands into ruin.
+
+Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted,
+and that
+
+
+CURIOSITY BLASTED HER
+
+and blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by
+unhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole
+of God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all
+human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out
+of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or
+have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into
+ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from
+which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain
+
+
+TREES OF MYSTERY
+
+how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity,
+resurrection--in the discussion of these subjects hundreds and
+thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually
+been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not
+understand who Melchisedec was not!
+
+Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It
+is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the
+eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a
+falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About
+other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other
+people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are
+over anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they
+fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of
+tittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house
+Colonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever
+hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable
+secret, let him come and sacrifice it to
+
+
+THIS GODDESS OF SPLUTTER.
+
+Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not
+belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this
+computation of moral algebra: good sense plus good breeding, minus
+curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!
+
+Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm
+of
+
+
+FRENCH NOVELS,
+
+to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced
+them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They
+want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance
+while they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching
+themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering
+with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage
+healthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated
+curiosity.
+
+
+TREACHEROUS FRUIT.
+
+The subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits
+that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony.
+Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also
+to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand
+years of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that
+luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great
+wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but
+there is death at the bottom. Intoxication has great exhilaration for
+a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars
+where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich,
+and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the
+dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or
+is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands
+on the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is
+ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that
+crackle with all-consuming torture? "Rejoice, O young man, in thy
+youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know
+thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!"
+
+
+SWEET AT THE START,
+
+horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly
+mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the
+last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own
+image.
+
+"Aha! aha!" says the roystering inebriate; "this is joy for you; fill
+high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's
+rags and my God's defiance." And he knows not that a fiend stirs the
+goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust
+their forked tongues hissing through the froth on the rim.
+
+
+PERDITION BOUGHT FOR A SIXPENCE.
+
+The Philistines jeered and laughed and shouted at Samson. Oh, they
+wanted him to make sport for them, and he made sport for them! How
+bright and gay was the scene for a little while! After awhile the
+giant puts one hand against this pillar, and the other hand against
+this pillar, and bows himself, and three thousand merry-makers are
+mashed like grapes in a wine-press. Sin rapturous at the start, awful
+at the last.
+
+That one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a
+blow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a
+butcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you
+would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and
+display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the
+disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the
+wretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open
+all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic
+transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world
+and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues
+upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened like a
+leech famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at
+the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!
+
+And there are those who are
+
+
+VOTARIES OF PLEASURE.
+
+Let me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and
+your summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are
+loud voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with
+terror. You are past the "Narrows," and almost outside the "Hook," and
+if the Atlantic take thee, frail mortal, thou shalt never get to shore
+again. Put back, row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore
+casteth a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Oh, are there not some
+of you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a
+vessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? Thou nearest the
+breakers, one heave upon the rock. Oh, what an awful crash was that!
+Another lunge may crush thee beneath the spars or grind thy bones to
+powder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard!
+Trust not that loose plank nor attempt the move, but quickly clasp the
+feet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until He hear
+thee, "Lord, save me, or I perish." Sin beautiful at the start--oh,
+how sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads
+you is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The
+promise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen
+sword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous handwritings on
+the wall.
+
+
+HIDEOUS ATTRACTIVENESS.
+
+Observe also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to
+great attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such
+perfection of womanhood. You could not suggest an attractiveness to
+the body or suggest any refinement to the manner. You could add no
+gracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the
+voice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman to be the companion of a
+perfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in
+accord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against
+God's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the
+fruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults,
+that have set the universe a-wailing,
+
+
+A TERRIBLE OFFSET
+
+to all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and
+women naturally vulgar going into transgression. We expect that
+people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but
+how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to
+the refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of
+Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more
+appalling. The genius of Catharine II., of Russia, only sets forth in
+more powerful contrast her unappeasable ambition. The translations
+from the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful
+qualifications for a queen, made the more disgusting her
+capriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness
+of Byron's mind made the more alarming Byron's sensuality.
+
+Let no one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or
+exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise
+apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness,
+for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward
+can give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for vice
+hell deep.
+
+My subject also impresses me with the regal
+
+
+INFLUENCE OF WOMAN.
+
+When I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the
+generations that have followed, it suggests to me the great power all
+women have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you,
+with the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and
+the stage. They mean nothing, they are accepted as nothing. Woman's
+nobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence, and when I
+see this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole
+human race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a
+blow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons,
+or up among the thrones.
+
+Of course, I am not speaking of representative women--of Eve, who
+ruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike
+through the head of Sisera the warrior; of Esther, who overcame
+royalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess;
+of Mary, who nursed the world's Saviour; of Grandmother Lois,
+immortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove
+the dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie
+Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a
+mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I
+speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who,
+unambitious for political power, as
+
+
+WIVES AND MOTHERS
+
+and sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of
+home.
+
+When at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny
+of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence
+came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and
+sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for
+heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city;
+and the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the
+brother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the
+aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and
+mother down the steep of years. Need I go into history to find you
+illustrations? Ah no; in your own memory there was at least one such!
+When I come to speak of womanly influence, my mind always wanders off
+to
+
+
+ONE MODEL,
+
+the aged one who, twenty years ago, we put away for the resurrection.
+About eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father
+and mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New
+Jersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long
+life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her
+end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door and was turned
+empty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one
+asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When
+the angel of life came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to
+rejoice at the incarnation. When the angel of death came to a
+neighbor's dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial.
+
+We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of
+my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor,
+but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of thy comforting
+grace?" Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had
+but one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent
+missionary son; and when the ship from China anchored in New York
+harbor, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his
+paternal home, she said: "Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant depart
+in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The prayer was soon
+answered.
+
+It was an autumnal day very much like this when we gathered from afar
+and found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She
+looked very natural, the hands very much as when they were employed in
+kindness for her children. Whatever else we forget, we never forget
+the look of mother's hands. As we stood there by the casket, we could
+not help but say: "Don't she look beautiful?" It was a cloudless day
+when, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting-place.
+The withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and
+the sun shone on the Raritan River until it looked like fire; but more
+calm and beautiful and radiant was the setting sun of that aged
+pilgrim's life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more
+death. Dear mother! Beautiful mother!
+
+    "Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,
+    While the pure spirit rests with God."
+
+I need not go back and show you Zenobia or Semiramis or Isabella as
+wonders of womanly excellence or greatness, when I in this moment
+point to your own picture gallery of memory, and show you the one face
+that you remember so well, and arouse all your holy reminiscences, and
+start you in new consecration to God by the pronunciation of that
+tender, beautiful, glorious word, "Mother! mother!"
+
+
+
+
+SISTERLY INFLUENCE.
+
+    "And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to
+    him."--EXODUS 2:4.
+
+
+Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the
+lattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious
+boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have
+been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby
+boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America
+carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves
+of papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of
+that material, as we learn from Pliny, and Herodotus, and
+Theophrastus.
+
+
+MIRIAM'S VIGIL.
+
+"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born," had been Pharaoh's order. To
+save her son, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, had put him in
+that queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood on the bank
+watching that craft with its precious burden. She was far enough off
+not to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer
+protection. There she stands on the bank, Miriam the poetess, Miriam
+the quick-witted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after
+time she became so mad with that very brother for marrying a woman she
+did not like, that she made a great family row, and was struck with
+leprosy.
+
+Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults like all the rest of
+us. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A
+strong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a
+sudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water-fowl, might
+swoop, and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or
+hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might craunch the babe.
+Miriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each
+side of her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the
+sun, came down and entered her bathing-house. When from the lattice
+she saw that boat she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were
+pulled back from the face of the child and the boy looked up he cried
+aloud, for he was hungry and frightened, and would not even let the
+princess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than
+acknowledge any one of the court as mother.
+
+
+AN ADROIT MAIDEN.
+
+Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to
+the child, leaps from the bank and rushes down and offers to get a
+nurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings Jochebed, the
+baby's mother, incognito, not sure of the court knowing that she was
+the mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for
+its fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire
+Jochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my
+hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful, brilliant,
+and strategic sister!
+
+"Go home," someone might have said to Miriam. "Why risk yourself out
+there alone on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in
+danger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian; go home!" No;
+Miriam, the sister, most lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses,
+the brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty
+centuries of the world's history have never had so much involved in
+the arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus
+boat calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to be a non-such in
+history. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer,
+conqueror, deliverer.
+
+
+HEBREW LEGENDS.
+
+He had such remarkable beauty in childhood that Josephus says, when he
+was carried along the road, people stopped to gaze at him, and
+workmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully
+put his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his
+foot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child
+might yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the
+Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before the child,
+one containing rubies, and the other burning coals. And if he took the
+coals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he was to die. For
+some reason the child took one of the coals, and put it in his mouth,
+so that his life was spared, although it burned the tongue till he was
+indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread
+open the palms of his hands in prayer and the Red Sea parted to let
+two million five hundred thousand people escape. And he put the palms
+of his hands together in prayer and the Red Sea closed on a
+strangulated host.
+
+
+UNIQUE BURIAL.
+
+His life was unutterably grand, his burial must be on the same scale.
+God would let neither man nor saint nor archangel have anything to do
+with weaving for him a shroud or digging for him a grave. The
+omnipotent God left His throne in heaven one day, and if the question
+was asked, "Whither is the King of the Universe going?" the answer
+was, "I am going down to bury Moses." And the Lord took this mightiest
+of men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear, and Moses ran his
+eye over the magnificent range of country. Here, the valley of
+Esdraelon, where the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and
+yonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon, and Gerizim, and hills of
+Judea; and the village of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho
+yonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost took the old
+lawgiver's breath away as he looked at it.
+
+And then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye
+of Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the
+great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased;
+and his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: "To the skies,
+thou immortal spirit!" And then one divine hand was put against the
+back of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God
+laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in
+the Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed
+in crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into
+an everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only
+obsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, and undertaker,
+and grave-digger, and mourner were ended.
+
+
+THE WORLD INDEBTED.
+
+Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an
+important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of
+river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one
+passenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming
+eternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from
+the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought
+that wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to
+be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from
+the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the
+God-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house,
+would have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of
+her own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there
+been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for
+faithful sisterhood!
+
+For how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a
+deliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted
+to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the
+farm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuous homes! Come up from the
+banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the
+Mobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and
+let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in
+law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics
+and religion!
+
+If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants,
+and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and
+trades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and
+perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would
+rise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how
+much of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have
+gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother
+sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the
+banks of self-denial.
+
+
+THE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.
+
+Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers,
+are younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the
+brother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off
+from her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back
+water-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister
+decides the direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By
+gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it
+toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a
+brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even
+religion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
+peace.
+
+
+HER TOILSOME LIFE.
+
+The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the
+family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of
+her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my
+sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and
+getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time
+she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her
+attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity,
+and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an
+ungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.
+
+In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of
+births are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out
+with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last
+because she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that
+sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters
+who sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of
+the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon
+them will have to turn out to let them, pass.
+
+
+HELP TO MAKE MEN.
+
+Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It
+is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother
+can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses.
+There is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I
+tell you what your brother will be--either a blessing or a curse to
+society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like
+Moses, have the choice between rubies and living coals, and your
+influence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like
+Moses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and
+mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of
+homes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well
+invested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger
+brothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the
+day the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will
+come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, censorious,
+unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own
+irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his
+infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few
+years of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected
+back upon you some day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis
+where he would have failed but for you.
+
+
+TEASING A FAMILY CURSE.
+
+Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability. Don't talk
+discouragingly about his future. Don't let Miriam get down off the
+bank of the Nile, and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don't
+tease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease.
+That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most
+devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another
+form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and
+makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less
+blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your
+sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your
+brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the
+body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and
+lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of
+innumerable households that the brothers tease the sisters, and the
+sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the
+shape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by
+revealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an
+"Ahem!" Tease! Tease! Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says: "He
+that hateth his brother is a murderer." Now, when you, by teasing,
+make your brother or sister hate you, you turn him or her into a
+murderer or murderess.
+
+
+BEWARE OF JEALOUSY.
+
+Don't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as it so often does,
+because her brother gets more honor or more means. Even Miriam, the
+heroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She
+had possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and
+not only so but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so
+disgusted and outraged at Moses, first because he had married at all,
+and next, because he had practised miscegenation, that she is drawn
+into a frenzy, and then begins to turn white, and gets white as a
+corpse, and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk;
+the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom
+she had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that
+brings her restoration.
+
+Let there be no room in all your house for jealousy, either to sit or
+stand. It is a leprous abomination. Your brother's success, O sisters!
+is your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while
+Moses the brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Red
+Sea, Miriam, the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted
+and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the
+cymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was
+smothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian helmet went under.
+
+
+FAMILY QUARRELS.
+
+How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand
+together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling
+about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with
+their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery
+that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each
+other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age
+of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the
+same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave
+in the cemetery.
+
+
+THE ROTHSCHILDS.
+
+If you only knew it, your interests are identical. Of all the
+families of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most
+conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm
+Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about
+him, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise
+that they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction,
+they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the
+raising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen.
+That illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes,
+a united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude
+of dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary
+impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling!
+Sister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will
+lovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous
+disaster strike.
+
+
+THE FAMILY BOND.
+
+When father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have
+not already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the
+only ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for
+your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same
+cradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled for by the
+same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of
+all the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who
+started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and
+prosperity--I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the
+sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother
+will see that the sister never wants an escort.
+
+Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and
+damning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would
+hardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would
+make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest
+prayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of
+sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of
+the world, and the brother flee off in another direction in
+dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at
+the iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a
+consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living
+together for years, very often do not know each other, and that they
+see only the imperfections and none of the virtues!
+
+
+A RUSSIAN BANQUET.
+
+General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, had in early life wandered off
+in the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a
+fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a
+banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited
+a plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted,
+came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife
+were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general
+asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had
+two brothers and a sister. "No other brothers?" "My younger brother
+went off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago
+killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger
+brother whom he thought was dead." And how loud was the cheer, and how
+warm was the embrace!
+
+Brother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other
+as they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is
+grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud
+and unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some
+woman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man.
+That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in
+June. Come, let me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam." "Miriam,
+this is Moses." Add seventy-five per cent to your present
+appreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not
+stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you
+hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have
+all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.
+
+
+BE AGREEABLE.
+
+Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible,
+remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood
+will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into
+the battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on
+paths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through
+shadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the
+journey be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's
+knee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and
+girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell
+of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as
+much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse
+to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall
+welcome us home, as we say: "Father and mother, we have come, and
+brought our children with us." The old revival hymn described it with
+glorious repetition:
+
+    "Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+    Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+    Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+      Will meet to part no more."
+
+I read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's
+house on a stormy night by some fascinating stories that were being
+told him, and then looked out and saw it was so dark he did not dare
+go home. The incident impressed me the more because in my childhood I
+had much, the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with
+him, but they dared not. It got later and later--seven o'clock, eight
+o'clock, nine o'clock. "Oh," he said, "I wish I were home!" As he
+opened the door the last time a blinding flash of the storm and a
+deafening roar overcame him. But after a while he saw in the distance
+a lantern, and lo! his brother was coming to fetch him home, and the
+lad stepped out and with swift feet hastened on to his brother who
+took him home, where they were so glad to greet him, and for a long
+time supper had been waiting. So may it be when the night of death
+comes and our earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare not go
+alone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother, our Friend closer than a
+brother, come out to meet us with the light of the promises, which
+shall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go in to join our
+loved ones waiting for us, supper all ready, the marriage supper of
+the Lamb!
+
+
+
+
+TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+    "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
+    alone? bid her therefore that she help me."--LUKE 10:40.
+
+
+Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead
+and his widow is taking charge of the premises. This is the widow
+Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household.
+This is Mary, the youngest sister, with a book under her arm, and her
+face having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation. Company has
+come. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good
+deal of excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture is
+hastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are
+adjusted as well as, in so short a time, Mary and Martha can attend to
+these matters.
+
+
+THE WELCOME TO CHRIST.
+
+They did not keep Christ standing at the door until they were newly
+appareled, or until they had elaborately arranged their tresses, then
+coming out with their affected surprise as though they had not heard
+the two or three previous knockings, saying: "Why, is that you?" No.
+They were ladies, and were always presentable, although they may not
+have always had on their best, for none of us always have on our best;
+if we did our best would not be worth having on. They throw open the
+door and greet Christ. They say: "Good morning, Master; come in and be
+seated."
+
+Christ did not come alone; He had a group of friends with Him, and
+such an influx of city visitors would throw any country home into
+perturbation. I suppose also the walk from the city had been a good
+appetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important
+department, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner greeted the guests
+than she fled to that room. Mary had no anxiety about household
+affairs. She had full confidence that Martha could get up the best
+dinner in Bethany. She seems to say: "Now, let us have a division of
+labor. Martha, you cook and I'll sit down and be good."
+
+
+DIFFERENCE IN SISTERS.
+
+So you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. There
+is Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive
+of some new pastry, or discovering something in the art of cooking and
+housekeeping. There is Mary, also, fond of conversation, literary, so
+engaged in deep questions of ethics she has no time to attend to the
+questions of household welfare. It is noon. Mary is in the parlor with
+Christ. Martha is in the kitchen. It would have been better if they
+had divided the work, and then they could have divided the opportunity
+of listening to Jesus; but Mary monopolizes Christ, while Martha
+swelters at the fire.
+
+
+TROUBLE IN THE KITCHEN.
+
+It was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that
+day. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious
+entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a
+repast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen.
+Perhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or
+Martha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only
+to have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting
+the proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with
+pitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the
+kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: "Lord, dost Thou not care
+that my sister hath left me to serve alone?"
+
+Christ scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have
+his scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He
+knew Martha had almost worked herself to death to get Him something
+to eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as
+He seems to say: "My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit
+down on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha,
+thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is
+needful." As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a
+great many household perplexities and anxieties.
+
+
+NON-APPRECIATION.
+
+First, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made
+Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her
+older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of
+the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange,
+they say when they get home: "Oh, you ought to be in our factory a
+little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty
+subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!"
+Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a
+university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a
+library, while she is health officer, police and president of her
+realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to
+keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed
+to the utmost.
+
+I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit
+in an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and
+throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and
+great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household.
+Those are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great mass
+of housekeepers--the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at
+thirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look
+as though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were
+sixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and
+Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great
+Armageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see
+that the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those
+tombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: "Here
+lies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and
+scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a
+broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle."
+
+
+A WEARING LIFE.
+
+You think, O man of the world! that you have all the cares and
+anxieties. If the cares and anxieties of the household should come
+upon you for one week you would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale--I
+mean insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper arises in the
+morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable
+hour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not
+come; what if the clock has stopped--no matter, she must have the
+morning repast at an irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got
+off to school. What if their garments are torn; what if they do not
+know their lessons; what if they have lost a hat or sash--they must be
+ready. Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps of several
+days, to plan; but what if the butcher has sent meat unmasticable, or
+the grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, and what if some
+piece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or the
+roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things
+occur--you must be ready.
+
+Spring weather comes, and there must be a revolution in the family
+wardrobe, or autumn comes, and you must shut out the northern blast;
+but what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during
+the year, the children have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if
+the fashions have changed. Your house must be an apothecary's shop; it
+must be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of
+ailments--something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn,
+something to poultice the inflammation, something to silence the
+jumping tooth, something to soothe the ear-ache. You must be in half a
+dozen places at the same time, or you must attempt to be.
+
+
+ASSURED SYMPATHY.
+
+If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient
+rush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient. Oh,
+woman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of
+others in regard to your household toils let me assure you, from the
+kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all
+your work from garret to cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and
+Hannah, and Abigail and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and
+Hannah More is the God of the housekeeper.
+
+Jesus was never married that he might be the especial friend and
+confidante of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I blunder; Christ
+was married. The Bible says that the Church is the Lamb's wife, and
+that makes me know that all Christian women have a right to go to
+Christ and tell Him of their annoyances and troubles, since by His
+oath of conjugal fidelity He is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert,
+the Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this subject:
+
+    "The servant by this clause
+      Makes drudgery divine;
+    Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
+      Makes this and the action fine."
+
+Again, there is the trial of
+
+
+SEVERE ECONOMY.
+
+Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are
+subjected to it--some under more and some under less stress of
+circumstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and
+take very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in
+demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of
+women--attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the
+bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the
+president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a
+panic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices,
+this perpetual study of economics, this life-long attempt to keep the
+outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers.
+
+
+A PREPARATION.
+
+Oh, my sister, this is a part of the divine discipline! If it were
+best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front
+windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked
+fifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of
+Zarephath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as
+long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness--forty years.
+Beside that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the
+contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none
+of the nuisances of catering for appetites. And in the land of the
+white robe they never have to mend anything, and the air in that hill
+country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man
+owns his own house, and a mansion at that.
+
+It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven
+if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be
+so great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of
+life if in this world you had a country-seat; but if you have walked
+with tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount
+celestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom,
+oh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do
+except what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen
+centuries! I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all
+the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes and the Hugh Latimers, and
+the Theban Legion. Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be
+kept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a change from here to
+there--from the time when they put down the rolling-pin to when they
+take up the sceptre! If Chatsworth Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on
+Fifth Avenue were to be lifted into the celestial city they would be
+considered uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus would be
+ashamed to be seen going in and out of either of them.
+
+
+THE TRIAL OF SICKNESS.
+
+There are many housekeepers who could get along with their toils if it
+were not for sickness and trouble. The fact is, one-half of the women
+of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass, who has
+never had an ache or pain, may consider household toil inconsiderable,
+and toward evening she may skip away miles to the fields and drive
+home the cattle, and she may until ten o'clock at night fill the house
+with laughing racket; but oh, to do the work of life with wornout
+constitution, when whooping cough has been raging for six weeks in the
+household, making the night as sleepless as the day--that is not so
+easy.
+
+Perhaps this comes after the nerves have been shattered by some
+bereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house, and
+set the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into
+a slumber which needs no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for
+the whole group a great deal better than she can for a part of the
+group now the rest are gone! Though you may tell her God is taking
+care of those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood both flocks;
+and one wing she puts over the flock in the house, the other wing she
+puts over the flock in the grave.
+
+There is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that
+will take a woman through the trials of home life. At first there may
+be a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage
+hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more
+than atoned by the joy of being together, and by the fact that when it
+is late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is
+time to go! The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of
+anxiety and apprehension, are a matter of merriment--the loaf of bread
+turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced
+or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the
+cutlery and the mantel ornaments of a new home.
+
+
+THE PROSE OF MATRIMONY.
+
+But after a while the romance is all gone, and then there is something
+to be prepared for the table that the book called "Cookery Taught in
+Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a
+handful of this, a cup of that and a spoonful of something else. It is
+not something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavored with
+ordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of
+domestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and
+the fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with
+the new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home
+trial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had a wretched
+home. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and
+he says, writing out of his own experience: "Better is a dinner of
+herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."
+
+
+GLORIOUS SELF-SACRIFICE.
+
+How great are the responsibilities of housekeepers! Sometimes an
+indigestible article of food, by its effect upon a commander or king,
+has defeated an army or over-thrown an empire. Housekeepers by the
+food they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they
+introduce, by the influences they bring around the home, are deciding
+the physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race.
+
+You say your life is one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters,
+that is the only life worth living. That was Florence Nightingale's
+life; that was Payson's life; that was Christ's life. We admire it in
+others, but how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves. When in
+this city young Dr. Hutchison, having spent a whole night in a
+diphtheritic room for the relief of a patient, became saturated with
+the poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to put garlands
+on his grave; everybody appreciates that. When in the burning hotel at
+St. Louis a young man on the fifth story broke open the door of the
+room where his mother was sleeping, and plunged in amid smoke and
+fire, crying: "Mother! where are you?" and never came out, our hearts
+applauded that young man. But how few of us have the Christ-like
+spirit--a willingness to suffer for others!
+
+
+A BARBAROUS PEDAGOGUE.
+
+A rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half-starved lad, who
+had offended against the laws of the school, and said: "Take off your
+coat directly, sir." The boy refused to take it off, whereupon the
+teacher said again: "Take off your coat, sir," as he swung the whip
+through the air. The boy refused. It was not because he was afraid of
+the lash--he was used to that at home--but it was from shame; he had
+no undergarment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his
+coat there went a sob through the school. They saw then why he did not
+want to remove his coat, and they saw the shoulder-blades had almost
+cut through the skin, and a stout, healthy boy rose up and went to the
+teacher of the school and said: "Oh, sir, please don't hurt this poor
+fellow; whip me; see, he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt
+him, he's poor; whip me." "Well," said the teacher, "it's going to be
+a severe whipping; I am willing to take you as a substitute." "Well,"
+said the boy, "I don't care; you whip me, if you will let this poor
+fellow go." The stout, healthy boy took the scourging without an
+outcry.[4] "Bravo," says every man--"Bravo!" How many of us are
+willing to take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and
+the anxiety for other people! Beautiful thing to admire, but how
+little we have of that spirit! God give us that self-denying spirit,
+so that whether we are in humble spheres or in conspicuous spheres we
+may perform our whole duty--for this struggle will soon be over.
+
+
+A CHRISTIAN HOUSEKEEPER.
+
+One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance
+of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we
+would come in from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I
+remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the
+line of gray hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table
+and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the fact
+is, I'm too tired to eat." Long after she might have delegated this
+duty to others she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the
+matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for
+somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in
+an express train, I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the
+window and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so
+one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped
+me on the shoulder and said: "De Witt, I see you are looking out at
+the scenes of your boyhood." "Oh, yes," I replied, "I was looking out
+at the old place where my mother lived and died."
+
+That night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was
+the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children
+on either side of the table, most of them gone never to come back. At
+one end of the table my father, with a smile that never left his
+countenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six
+years' smile--not the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage
+and of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful,
+benignant, hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She
+was very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. "Blessed
+are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and
+their works do follow them."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] It may be hoped that the savage who administered it received the
+attention of the Board of Education. A man so grossly unjust should be
+in the Penitentiary.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN ENTHRONED.
+
+    "There are threescore queens."--SOLOMON'S SONG 6:8.
+
+
+So Solomon, by one stroke, sets forth the imperial character of a true
+Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a
+subordinate, but a queen; and in my text Solomon sees sixty of these
+helping to make up the royal pageant of Jesus. Crown and courtly
+attendants and imperial wardrobe are not necessary to make a queen,
+but graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman.
+Woman's position is higher in the world than man's, and although she
+has often been denied the right of suffrage, she always does vote, and
+always will vote, by her influence, and her chief desire ought to be
+that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she
+has already won. My chief anxiety is not that woman have other rights
+accorded her, but that she by the grace of God rise up to the
+appreciation of the glorious rights she already possesses. I shall
+enumerate some of those rights this morning.
+
+I. In the first place, woman has the special and superlative right of
+blessing and
+
+
+COMFORTING THE SICK.
+
+What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of
+disease? Tens of thousands of sick-beds! What shall we do with them?
+Shall man, with his rough hand and heavy foot and impatient bearing,
+minister? No. He cannot soothe the pain. He cannot quiet the nerves.
+He knows not where to set the light. His hand is not steady enough to
+pour out the drops. He is not wakeful enough to be watcher. The Lord
+God, who sent Miss Dix into the Virginia hospitals, and Florence
+Nightingale into the Crimea, and the Maid of Saragossa to appease the
+wounds of the battlefield, has equipped wife, mother, and daughter for
+this delicate but tremendous mission.
+
+You have known men who despised woman, but the moment disease fell
+upon them, they did not send for their friends at the bank, or their
+partner in business, or their worldly associates. Their first cry was,
+"Take me to my wife." The dissipated young man at the college scoffs
+at the idea of being under home influences, but at the first blast of
+the typhoid fever on his cheek he says,
+
+
+"WHERE IS MOTHER?"
+
+I think one of the most pathetic passages in all the Bible is the
+description of the lad who went out to the harvest-field of Shunem
+and got sun-struck, throwing his hands on his temples and crying out,
+"Oh, my head! my head!" and they said: "Carry him to his mother." And
+then the record is: "He sat on her knees till noon, and then died." It
+is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel, once in
+a while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their
+mouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn
+you in the bed! How loudly they talk! How you long for the ministries
+of home!
+
+I knew one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes for
+several weeks' business absence at the West. A telegram came at
+midnight that he was on his death-bed, far away from home. By express
+train the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late. He
+feared not to die; but he was in an agony to live until his family got
+there. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while
+longer. He said: "I am willing to die, but not alone." But the pulses
+fluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped. The express trains
+met in the midnight--wife and daughters going westward, lifeless
+remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad,
+pitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick we want to be sick
+at home. When the time comes for us to die,
+
+
+WE WANT TO DIE AT HOME.
+
+The room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be
+very plain; but who cares for that? Loving hands to bathe the temples;
+loving voices to speak good cheer; loving lips to read the comforting
+promises of Jesus. In the war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the
+musketry; men cried to the hosts, "Forward, march!" men hurled their
+battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, "Charge! charge!"
+but woman scraped the lint; woman administered the cordials; woman
+watched by the dying couch; woman wrote the last message to the home
+circle; woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and
+four men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bands
+and triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be
+written anywhere, save in
+
+
+THE CHRONICLES OF HEAVEN,
+
+of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the
+Chickahominy; of Annie Ross in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret
+Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds
+undressed, some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them
+over, those who had an arm left waved it, and filled the air with
+their "hurrah!"--of Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago with blankets
+and with pillows, until the men shouted: "Three cheers for the
+Christian-Commission! God bless the women at home!" then sitting down
+to take the last message: "Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to
+meet me in heaven; tell her to train up the boys whom we have loved so
+well; tell her we shall meet again in the good land; tell her to bear
+my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier"--and of Mrs.
+Shelton, into whose face the convalescent soldier looked and said:
+"Your grapes and cologne cured me."
+
+Men did their work with shot, and shell, and carbine, and howitzer;
+
+
+WOMEN DID THEIR WORK
+
+with socks, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and Scripture
+texts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that
+land where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded
+and said: "On which side did you fight?" Women knelt down over the
+wounded and said: "Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for
+you to eat? What makes you cry?" To-night, while we men are sound
+asleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will
+be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in
+that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.
+
+II. Again, woman has a superlative right to take
+
+
+CARE OF THE POOR.
+
+There are hundreds and thousands of them in all our cities. There is a
+kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of
+little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need
+to be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks
+would know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a
+dress? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little
+girl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new
+pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it
+falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so
+heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather
+it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and
+finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the
+donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps
+as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust
+out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to
+have come down.
+
+O Christian young woman, if you would make yourself happy and win the
+blessing of Christ, go out
+
+
+AMONG THE DESTITUTE!
+
+A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry;
+but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty
+will give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, "Look after that
+woman; canopy her with your wings and shelter her from all harm;" and
+while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the
+little ones around the room will whisper, "Who is she? Ain't she
+beautiful?" and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear
+dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten
+stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the
+highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men."
+
+Can you tell me why a Christian woman, going-down among
+
+
+THE HAUNTS OF INIQUITY
+
+on a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity? I stood in the
+chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,
+in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh; and I said to
+her, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place,
+"Do you come here nights to hold a service?" "Oh yes," she said, "I
+take my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest
+and the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel;
+and then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them." I
+said, "Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while
+performing this Christian errand?" "Never," she said, "never."
+
+That young woman who has her father by her side walking down the
+street, and an armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as
+that Christian woman who goes forth on gospel work into the haunts of
+iniquity, carrying Bibles and bread. Some one said, "I dislike very
+much to see that Christian woman teaching those bad boys
+
+
+IN THE MISSION SCHOOL;
+
+I am afraid to have her instruct them." "So," said another man, "I am
+afraid too." Said the first: "I am afraid they will use vile language
+before they leave the place." "Ah!" said the other man, "I am not
+afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that if any of those boys
+should use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him
+to pieces and kill him on the spot."
+
+
+SOLICITATION OF CHARITIES.
+
+Backed up by barrels in which there is no flour, and by stoves in
+which there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no
+clothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to
+her, "You go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money."
+She goes in and gets it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She
+could not help but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should get
+it. No need of your turning your back and pretending you don't hear;
+you do hear. There is no need of your saying you are begged to death.
+There is no need of your wasting your time, and you might as well
+submit first as last. You had better right away take down your
+cheque-book, mark the number of the cheque, fill up the blank, sign
+your name, and hand it to her.
+
+There is no need of wasting time. Those poor children on the back
+street have been hungry long enough. That sick man must have some
+farina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I meet
+this delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of such a
+hard-fisted man, and I say, "Did you get the money?" "Of course," she
+says, "I got the money; that's what I went for. The Lord told me to go
+in and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand."
+
+III. Again I have to tell you that it is woman's specific
+
+
+RIGHT TO COMFORT
+
+under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel;
+but all profane as well as sacred history attests that, when the
+crisis comes, she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency.
+How often you have seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of
+frivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to
+a heroine. Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never
+tell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great
+loss to their store, or some of their companions in business play them
+a sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is asked in the
+household, again and again, "What is the matter?" but he believes it a
+sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul.
+Oh sir, your first duty was to
+
+
+TELL YOUR WIFE
+
+all about it. She perhaps might not have disentangled your finances or
+extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear
+misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is
+intended for two.
+
+There are business men here who know what I mean. There came a crisis
+in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while
+there came a day when you said, "Here I shall have to stop," and you
+called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in
+your employ, and you said, "We have got to stop." You left the store
+suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the
+street and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking
+at you, and blaming you, and denouncing you.
+
+You hastened home. You told your wife all about the affair. What did
+she say? Did she play the butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and
+the ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She
+quailed not under the stroke. She helped you begin to plan right away.
+She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and
+wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your
+affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a
+thin, weak woman's arm holding you up; but while you looked at that
+arm, there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the
+eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the
+beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten, twenty,
+or thirty years ago. You said, "Well, this is the happiest day of my
+life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care--I
+don't care."
+
+At the moment you were utterly exhausted. God sent a Deborah to meet
+the host of the Amalekites, and scatter them like chaff over the
+plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels,
+and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their
+Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if
+they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any
+such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a
+Thermopylæ in your own household, where God will tell you to stand.
+There are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where
+as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by
+Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of Arc.
+
+IV. Again, I remark, it is woman's right to
+
+
+BRING TO US THE KINGDOM
+
+of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man.
+Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the
+pleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she
+can more easily become a Christian I prove by the statement that
+three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are
+women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this
+world back to God.
+
+
+THE GREATEST SERMONS
+
+are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an
+audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent,
+consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of
+God's truth.
+
+A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on
+toward morning--one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not
+make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened
+the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got
+home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along with you.
+So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and
+make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or
+three o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened,
+and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall
+I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they
+provided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down
+at the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian
+wife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all
+this, broke into tears, and said: "I can't stand this. Oh, what a
+wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his
+Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his
+immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the
+faith and hope of the Gospel.
+
+A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of
+transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of
+obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord
+Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A
+sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something
+had happened, and the sailors cried, "What's the matter?" He said,
+
+
+"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS
+
+haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home
+influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There
+are men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because
+they were any better naturally than some other people, but because
+there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a
+good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a
+Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into
+African jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so
+far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.
+
+I stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of
+their husbands in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an
+oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until
+death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but
+after that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal
+separation? Is there any such thing as
+
+
+AN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,
+
+making the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulchre brighter than
+the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma?
+Yes; I stand here as a priest of the most high God to proclaim the
+banns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace
+of Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son away from
+God? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are
+prayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give,
+there are examples for you to make; and I say now, this morning, as
+Paul said to the Corinthian woman: "What knowest thou, O woman, but
+thou canst save thy husband?"
+
+A man was dying, and he said to his wife: "Rebecca, you wouldn't let
+me have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me
+away into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is
+sealed, and you are
+
+
+THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN."
+
+O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are
+there not some here who have kindly influences at home--are there not
+some here who have wandered far away from God, who can remember the
+Christian influences in their early home? Do not despise those
+influences, my brother. If you die without Christ, what will you do
+with your mother's prayers, with your wife's importunities, with your
+sister's entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to
+write to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so
+kindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be but just one strand
+holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like,
+this morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach.
+For the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of your mother's God,
+for the sake of your daughter's God, for the sake of your sister's
+God, come this day and be saved.
+
+V. Lastly, I wish to say that one of the specific rights of women is,
+through the grace of Christ, finally
+
+
+TO REACH HEAVEN.
+
+Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ's mother, in
+heaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the
+mother of Augustine in heaven; the Countess of Huntingdon--who sold
+her splendid jewels to build chapels--in heaven; while a great many
+others, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little,
+have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a
+change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the
+glass broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the "house
+of many mansions!" No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no
+more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show
+it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for
+aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten
+frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering
+steps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen,
+bitter curse.
+
+Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and
+struggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your
+door fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But
+God has a crown for you.
+
+I want you to realize, this morning, that He is now making it, and
+whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, whenever
+you have a pang of body or soul He puts another gem in that crown,
+until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for
+another splendor, and God will say to His angel, "The crown is done;
+let her up that she may wear it." And as the Lord of Righteousness
+puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, "Who is she?"
+and Christ will say, "I will tell you who she is. She is the one that
+came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made
+white in the blood of the Lamb."
+
+
+A BANQUET.
+
+And then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the
+principalities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will
+blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God, and crimson
+with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and water from
+the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the
+old harpers of heaven will sit there making music with their harps;
+and Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying,
+"She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified
+together." And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace,
+will break forth with congratulation, "Hail! hail!" And there will be
+handwritings on the wall--not such as struck the Persian noblemen with
+horror, but fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light
+and love and victory: "God hath wiped away all tears from all faces!"
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS' VISIT.
+
+    "I will go and see him before I die."--GEN. 45:28.
+
+
+Jacob had long since passed the hundred year mile-stone. In those
+times people were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after
+persons lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of
+his time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to one
+hundred and forty years. A man of undoubted veracity on the
+witness-stand in England swore that he remembered an event one hundred
+and fifty years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut
+three sets of teeth, and died at one hundred and forty years. Joseph
+Crele, of Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and forty years. In 1857 a
+book was printed containing the names of thirty-seven person who lived
+one hundred and forty years, and the names of eleven persons who lived
+one hundred and fifty years.
+
+Among the grand old people of whom we have record was Jacob, the
+shepherd of the text. But he had
+
+
+A BAD LOT OF BOYS.
+
+They were jealous and ambitious and every way unprincipled. Joseph,
+however, seemed to be an exception; but he had been gone many years,
+and the probability was that he was dead. As sometimes now in a house
+you will find kept at the table a vacant chair, a plate, a knife, a
+fork, for some deceased member of the family, so Jacob kept in his
+heart a place for his beloved Joseph. There sits the old man, the
+flock of one hundred and forty years in their flight having alighted
+long enough to leave the marks of their claw on forehead and cheek and
+temple. His long beard snows down over his chest. His eyes are
+somewhat dim, and he can see further when they are closed than when
+they are open, for he can see clear back into the time when beautiful
+Rachel, his wife, was living, and his children shook the Oriental
+abode with their merriment.
+
+The centenarian is sitting dreaming over the past when he hears a
+wagon rumbling to the front door. He gets up and goes to the door to
+see who has arrived, and his long absent sons from Egypt come in and
+announce to him that Joseph instead of being dead is living in an
+Egyptian palace, with all the investiture of prime minister, next to
+the king in the mightiest empire of all the world!
+
+
+THE NEWS WAS TOO SUDDEN
+
+and too glad for the old man, and his cheeks whiten, and he has a
+dazed look, and his staff falls out of his hand, and he would have
+dropped had not the sons caught him and led him to a lounge and put
+cold water on his face, and fanned him a little.
+
+In that half delirium the old man mumbles something about his son
+Joseph. He says: "You do not mean Joseph, do you? my dear son who has
+been dead so long. You don't mean Joseph, do you?" But after they had
+fully resuscitated him, and the news was confirmed, the tears begin
+the winding way down the cross roads of the wrinkles, and the sunken
+lips of the old man quiver, and he brings his bent fingers together as
+he says: "Joseph is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die."
+
+It did not take the old man a great while to get ready, I warrant you.
+He put on the best clothes that the shepherd's wardrobe could afford.
+He got into the wagon, and though the aged are cautious and like to
+ride slow, the wagon did not get along fast enough for this old man;
+and when the wagon with the old man met Joseph's chariot coming down
+to meet him, and Joseph got out of the chariot and got into the wagon
+and threw his arms around his father's neck, it was an antithesis of
+
+
+ROYALTY AND RUSTICITY,
+
+of simplicity and pomp, of filial affection and paternal love, which
+leaves us so much in doubt about whether we had better laugh or cry,
+that we do both. So Jacob kept the resolution of the text: "I will go
+and see him before I die." And if our friends the reporters would like
+to have an appropriate title for this sermon, they might call it "The
+Old Folks' Visit."
+
+What a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not
+almost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers
+had blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded,
+overflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the
+harvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of
+famine had passed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is
+overwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped,
+though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired
+the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and
+now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the
+childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are
+fresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as
+fresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the
+boy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family
+record the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I
+said to my parents: "What is this record, and what does it mean?"
+Their chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them
+
+
+A VERY TENDER SORROW.
+
+What does that all mean? Why, it means our children departed are ours
+yet, and that cord of attachment reaching across the years will hold
+us until it brings us together in the palace, as Jacob and Joseph were
+brought together. That is one thing that makes old people die happy.
+They realize it is reunion with those from whom they have long been
+separated.
+
+I am often asked as pastor--and every pastor is asked the
+question--"Will my children be
+
+
+CHILDREN IN HEAVEN,
+
+and forever children?" Well, there was no doubt a great change in
+Joseph from the time Jacob lost him, and the time when Jacob found
+him--between the boy seventeen years of age and the man in midlife,
+his forehead developed with a great business estate; but Jacob was
+glad to get back Joseph anyhow, and it did not make much difference to
+the old man whether the boy looked older, or looked younger. And it
+will be enough joy for that parent if he can get back that son, that
+daughter, at the gate of heaven, whether the departed loved one shall
+come a cherub or in full-grown angelhood. There must be a change
+wrought by that celestial climate and by those supernal years, but it
+will only be from loveliness to more loveliness, and from health to
+more radiant health. O parent, as you think of the darling panting and
+white in membranous croup, I want you to know it will be gloriously
+bettered in that land where there has never been a death and where all
+the inhabitants will live on in the great future as long as God!
+Joseph was Joseph notwithstanding the palace, and your child will be
+your child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of everlasting
+noon. What
+
+
+A THRILLING VISIT
+
+was that of the old shepherd to the prime-minister Joseph! I see the
+old countryman seated in the palace looking around at the mirrors and
+the fountains and the carved pillars, and oh! how he wishes that
+Rachel, his wife, was alive and she could have come there with him to
+see their son in his great house. "Oh," says the old man within
+himself, "I do wish Rachel could be here to see all this!" I visited
+at the farmhouse of the father of Millard Fillmore when the son was
+President of the United States, and the octogenerian farmer
+entertained me until eleven o'clock at night telling me what great
+things he saw in his son's house at Washington, and what Daniel
+Webster said to him, and how grandly Millard treated his father in the
+White House. The old man's face was illumined with the story until
+almost the midnight. He had just been visiting his son at the Capitol.
+And I suppose it was something of the same joy that thrilled the heart
+of the old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime-minister.
+It is
+
+
+A GREAT DAY WITH YOU
+
+when your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand
+around with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so
+old. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little
+restless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in
+their own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a
+benediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and
+you make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will
+probably not visit you very often--perhaps never again. You go to
+their room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are
+properly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better
+than the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real
+interest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.
+Joseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of
+his father than you do of your parents. The probability is, before
+they leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.
+Grandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your
+children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation
+in the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!
+
+Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever
+may have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a
+palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two most
+memorable visits will be the first and the last. Those two pictures
+will hang in the hall of your memory while memory lasts, and you will
+remember just how they looked, and where they sat, and what they said,
+and at what figure of the carpet, and at what door-sill they parted
+with you, giving you the final good-bye. Do not be embarrassed if your
+father come to town and he have the manners of the shepherd, and if
+your mother come to town and there be in her hat no sign of costly
+millinery. The wife of Emperor Theodosius said a wise thing when she
+said: "Husband, remember what you lately were, and remember what you
+are, and be thankful."
+
+By this time you all notice what
+
+
+KINDLY PROVISION
+
+Joseph made for his father Jacob. Joseph did not say: "I can't have
+the old man around this place. How clumsy he would look climbing up
+these marble stairs, and walking over these mosaics! Then, he would be
+putting his hands upon some of these frescoes. People would wonder
+where that old greenhorn came from. He would shock all the Egyptian
+court with his manners at table. Besides that, he might get sick on my
+hands, and he might be querulous, and he might talk to me as though I
+were only a boy, when I am the second man in all the realm. Of course,
+he must not suffer, and if there is famine in his country--and I hear
+there is--I will send him some provisions; but I can't take a man from
+Padan-aram and introduce him into this polite Egyptian court. What a
+nuisance it is to have
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS!"
+
+Joseph did not say that, but he rushed out to meet his father with
+perfect abandon of affection, and brought him up to the palace, and
+introduced him to the Emperor, and provided for all the rest of the
+father's days, and nothing was too good for the old man while living;
+and when he was dead Joseph, with military escort, took his father's
+remains to the family cemetery at Machpelah and put them down beside
+Rachel, Joseph's mother. Would God all children were as kind to their
+parents!
+
+If the father have large property, and he be wise enough to keep it in
+his own name, he will be respected by the heirs; but how often it is
+when the son finds the father in famine, as Joseph found Jacob in
+famine, the young people make it very hard for the old man. They are
+so surprised he eats with a knife instead of a fork. They are
+chagrined at his antediluvian habits. They are provoked because he
+cannot hear as well as he used to, and when he asks it over again, and
+the son has to repeat it, he bawls in the old man's ear: "I hope you
+hear that!" How long he must wear the old coat or the old hat before
+they get him a new one! How chagrined they are at his independence of
+the English grammar! How long he hangs on! Seventy years and not gone
+yet! Seventy-five years and not gone yet! Eighty years and not gone
+yet! Will he ever go? They think it of no use to have a doctor in his
+last sickness, and go up to the drugstore and get a dose of something
+that makes him worse, and economize on a coffin, and beat the
+undertaker down to the last point, giving a note for the reduced
+amount which they never pay! I have officiated at obsequies of aged
+people where the family have been so inordinately resigned to the
+Providence that I felt like taking my text from Proverbs: "The eye
+that mocketh at its father, and refuseth to obey its mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it." In other words, such an ingrate ought to have a flock of crows
+for pall-bearers! I congratulate you if you have the honor of
+providing for aged parents. The blessing of the Lord God of Joseph and
+Jacob will be on you.
+
+I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the
+most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of
+a son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the
+servants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of
+carriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer
+afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the
+house where he was not welcome, and there were musical instruments of
+all sorts to regale him; and when life had passed, the neighbors came
+out and expressed all honor possible, and carried him to the village
+Machpelah and put him down beside the Rachel with whom he had lived
+more than half a century.
+
+
+SHARE YOUR SUCCESSES
+
+with the old people. The probability is, that the principles they
+inculcated achieved your fortune. Give them a Christian percentage of
+kindly consideration. Let Joseph divide with Jacob the pasture fields
+of Goshen and the glories of the Egyptian court.
+
+And here I would like to sing the praises of the sisterhood who
+remained unmarried that they might administer to aged parents. The
+brutal world calls these
+
+
+SELF-SACRIFICING ONES
+
+by ungallant names, and says they are peculiar or angular; but if you
+had had as many annoyances as they have had, Xantippe would have been
+an angel compared with you. It is easier to take care of five
+rollicking, romping children than of one childish old man. Among the
+best women of Brooklyn and of yonder transpontine city are those who
+allowed the bloom of life to pass away while they were caring for
+their parents. While other maidens were sound asleep, they were
+soaking the old man's feet or tucking up the covers around the invalid
+mother. While other maidens were in the cotillon, they were dancing
+attendance upon rheumatism and spreading plasters for the lame back of
+the septuagenarian, and heating catnip tea for insomnia.
+
+In almost every circle of our kindred there has been some
+
+
+QUEEN OF SELF-SACRIFICE
+
+to whom jeweled hand after jeweled hand was offered in marriage, but
+who stayed on the old place because of the sense of filial obligation
+until the health was gone and the attractiveness of personal presence
+had vanished. Brutal society may call such a one by a nickname. God
+calls her daughter, and Heaven calls her saint, and I call her
+domestic martyr. A half dozen ordinary women have not as much nobility
+as could be found in the smallest joint of the little finger of her
+left hand. Although the world has stood six thousand years, this is
+the first apotheosis of maidenhood, although in the long line of those
+who have declined marriage that they might be qualified for some
+especial mission are the names of Anna Ross, and Margaret
+Breckinridge, and Mary Shelton, and Anna Etheridge, and Georgiana
+Willetts, the angels of the battlefields of Fair Oaks, and Lookout
+Mountain, and Chancellorsville, and Cooper Shop Hospital: and though
+single life has been honored by the fact that the three grandest men
+of the Bible--John and Paul and Christ--were
+
+
+CELIBATES.
+
+Let the ungrateful world sneer at the maiden aunt, but God has a
+throne burnished for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in
+heaven there is a vase containing two jewels, the one brighter than
+the Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any diamond
+ever found in the districts of Golconda--the one jewel by the lapidary
+of the palace cut with the words: "Inasmuch as ye did it to father;"
+the other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words:
+"Inasmuch as ye did it to mother." "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse"
+is the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton, who found an old woman who
+had been turned off by her prospered sons; but I thank God I may find
+in my text "Over the hills to the palace."
+
+As if to disgust us with unfilial conduct, the Bible presents us the
+story of Micah, who stole the eleven hundred shekels from his mother,
+and the story of Absalom, who tried to dethrone his father. But all
+history is beautiful with stories of filial fidelity. Epaminondas, the
+warrior, found his chief delight in reciting to his parents his
+victories. There goes Æneas from burning Troy, on his shoulders
+Anchises, his father. The Athenians punished with death any unfilial
+conduct. There goes beautiful Ruth escorting venerable Naomi across
+the desert amid the howling of the wolves and the barking of the
+jackals. John Lawrence burned at the stake in Colchester, was cheered
+in the flames by his children, who said: "O God, strengthen thy
+servant and keep thy promise!" And Christ in the hour of excruciation
+provided for His old mother. Jacob kept his resolution, "I will go and
+see him before I die," and a little while after we find them walking
+the tessellated floor of the palace, Jacob and Joseph, the
+prime-minister proud of the shepherd.
+
+I may say in regard to the most of you that your parents have probably
+visited you for the last time, or will soon pay you such a visit, and
+I have wondered if they will ever visit you
+
+
+IN THE KING'S PALACE.
+
+"Oh," you say, "I am in the pit of sin!" Joseph was in the pit. "Oh,"
+you say, "I am in the prison of mine iniquity!" Joseph was once in
+prison. "Oh," you say, "I didn't have a fair chance; I was denied
+maternal kindness!" Joseph was denied maternal attendance. "Oh," you
+say, "I am far away from the land of my nativity!" Joseph was far from
+home. "Oh," you say, "I have been betrayed and exasperated!" Did not
+Joseph's brethren sell him to a passing Ishmaelitish caravan? Yet God
+brought him to that emblazoned residence; and if you will trust His
+grace in Jesus Christ you, too, will be empalaced. Oh, what a day that
+will be when the old folks come from an adjoining mansion in heaven,
+and find you amid the alabaster pillars of the throne-room and living
+with the king! They are coming up the steps now, and the epauletted
+guard of the palace rushes in and says: "Your father's coming, your
+mother's coming!" And when under the arches of precious stones and on
+the pavement of porphyry you greet each other, the scene will eclipse
+the meeting on the Goshen highway, when Joseph and Jacob fell on each
+other's neck and wept a good while.
+
+But oh, how changed the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into
+the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into
+immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the
+sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit
+passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and
+dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer
+has been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on
+earth before we died, now we visit you in your new home after our
+ascension." And father will say, "Mother, don't you see Joseph is yet
+alive?" and mother will say, "Yes, father, Joseph is yet alive." And
+then they will talk over their earthly anxieties in regard to you, and
+the midnight supplications in your behalf, and they will recite to
+each other the old Scripture passage with which they used to cheer
+their staggering faith: "I will be a God to thee and thy seed after
+thee." Oh, the palace, the palace, the palace! That is what Richard
+Baxter called "The Saints' Everlasting Rest." That is what John Bunyan
+called the "Celestial City." That is Young's "Night Thoughts" turned
+into morning exultations. That is Gray's "Elegy in a Churchyard"
+turned to resurrection spectacle. That is the "Cotter's Saturday
+Night" exchanged for the Cotter's Sabbath morning. That is the
+shepherd of Salisbury Plain amid the flocks on the hills of heaven.
+That is the famine-struck Padan-aram turned into the rich pasture
+fields of Goshen. That is Jacob visiting Joseph at the emerald
+castle.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.
+
+    "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord
+    hath done for thee."--MARK 5:19.
+
+
+There are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which
+to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish
+that they had some such great opportunity in which to display their
+Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they
+only wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach
+righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; all they want is only
+an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now the evangelist
+comes to us, and he practically says: "I will show you a place where
+you can exhibit all that is grand, and beautiful, and glorious in
+Christian character, and that is the domestic circle."
+
+
+EVERY MAN'S OPPORTUNITY.
+
+If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere he will not be
+faithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at
+the gate of the temple, he will never be able to preach three thousand
+souls into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will not take pains
+to instruct in the way of salvation the jailor of the Philippian
+dungeon, he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not faithful in a
+skirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is we are
+all placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve
+God; and we ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of
+usefulness which we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing
+question with you and with me ought to be: "Lord, what wilt thou have
+me now and here to do?"
+
+
+WHAT A HOME IS.
+
+There is one word in my text around which the most of our thoughts
+will this morning revolve. That word is "Home." Ask ten different men
+the meaning of that word, and they will give you ten different
+definitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at
+the table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books,
+devotion at the altar. To him it means a greeting at the door and a
+smile at the chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping its hands
+with laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the ripples sleep the
+shadows.
+
+Ask another man what home is, and he will tell you it is want, looking
+out of a cheerless firegrate, kneading hunger in an empty bread tray.
+The damp air shivering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children
+robbers and murderers in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every
+face a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from
+the front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that door-sill. Vestibule of
+the pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forging everlasting
+chains. Faggots for an unending funeral pile. Awful word! It is
+spelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats
+with the death agony of despair.
+
+The word "Home" in the one case means everything bright. The word
+"Home" in the other case means everything terrific.
+
+I shall speak to you this morning of home as a test of character, home
+as a refuge, home as a political safeguard, home as a school, and home
+as a type of heaven.
+
+And in the first place I remark, that home is a powerful test of
+character. The disposition in public may be in gay costume, while in
+private it is in dishabille. As play actors may appear in one way on
+the stage, and may appear in another way behind the scenes, so private
+character may be very different from public character. Private
+character is often public character turned wrong side out. A man may
+receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of
+smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are
+business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and
+good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and
+their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam
+breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets.
+
+
+HOME MANNERS.
+
+Reputation is only the shadow of character, and a very small house
+sometimes will cast a very long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with
+myrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as bright and warm as a
+sheaf of sunbeams, and yet they may only be a magnificent show window
+to a wretched stock of goods. There is many a man who is affable in
+public life and amid commercial spheres who, in a cowardly way, takes
+his anger and his petulance home, and drops them on the domestic
+circle.
+
+The reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because
+they do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their
+petulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do
+not let their notes go to protest. It does not pay. Or for the same
+reason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his
+stock at less than the right price, lest it depreciate the value. As
+at some time the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a
+tempestuous night. There are people who in public act the
+philanthropist, who at home act the Nero, with respect to their
+slippers and their gown.
+
+
+AUDUBON'S GREATNESS.
+
+Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through
+the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful
+birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript,
+and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and
+rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the
+manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad
+temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all
+the great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And
+yet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are
+utterly unreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of
+raiment will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm.
+
+Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private
+is making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank
+that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in
+circulation with no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at
+home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have
+not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public
+plausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the
+slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a
+mighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere,
+whether you demonstrate it or not.
+
+
+HOME A REFUGE.
+
+Again, I remark that home is a refuge. Life is the United States army
+on the national road to Mexico, a long march, with ever and anon a
+skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack the
+arms, we hang up the war cap and lay our head on the knapsack, we
+sleep until the morning bugle calls us to marching and action. How
+pleasant it is to rehearse the victories and the surprises, and the
+attacks of the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle!
+
+Yea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts, and torn sails, and
+hulk aleak, we put in at the harbor of home. Blessed harbor! There we
+go for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The candle in the window
+is to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children
+go forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the "Narrows" take the
+hand of ships. The door-sill of the home is the wharf where heavy
+life is unladen.
+
+There is the place where we may talk of what we have done without
+being charged with self adulation. There is the place where we may
+lounge without being thought ungraceful. There is the place where we
+may express affection without being thought silly. There is the place
+where we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles.
+Forlorn earth pilgrim! no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is
+brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent
+for marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest
+from this scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain. God pity the
+man or the woman who has no home!
+
+
+A POLITICAL SAFEGUARD.
+
+Further, I remark that home is a political safeguard. The safety of
+the State must be built on the safety of the home. Why cannot France
+come to a placid republic? Ever and anon there is a threat of national
+capsize. France as a nation has not the right kind of a Christian
+home. The Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for a
+republic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute
+necessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to
+make the family adhere, there will not be enough political principle
+to make the State adhere. "No home" means the Goths and Vandals, means
+the Nomads of Asia, means the Numideans of Africa, changing from place
+to place, according as the pasture happens to change. Confounded be
+all those Babels of iniquity which would overtower and destroy the
+home. The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails
+will sink the frigate of the constitution. Jails and penitentiaries
+and armies and navies are not our best defence. The door of the home
+is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and
+the chimneys of our dwelling houses are the grandest monuments of
+safety and triumph. No home; no republic.
+
+
+AS A SCHOOL.
+
+Further, I remark, that home is a school. Old ground must be turned up
+with subsoil plough, and it must be harrowed and re-harrowed, and then
+the crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less
+culture. Now youth and childhood are new ground, and all the
+influences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after life
+luxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approbation, all the
+good cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your
+children. And every ebullition of anger and every uncontrollable
+display of indignation will be fuel to their disposition twenty, or
+thirty, or forty years from now--fuel for a bad fire a quarter of a
+century from this.
+
+You praise the intelligence of your child too much sometimes when you
+think he is not aware of it, and you will see the result of it before
+ten years of age in his annoying affectations. You praise his beauty,
+supposing he is not large enough to understand what you say, and you
+will find him standing on a high chair before a flattering mirror.
+Words and deeds and example are the seed of character, and children
+are very apt to be the second edition of their parents. Abraham begat
+Isaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the ancestral line; but Herod
+begat Archelaus, so iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility
+comes upon parents in view of this subject!
+
+Oh, make your home the brightest place on earth, if you would charm
+your children to the high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion!
+Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts
+gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do
+not expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover
+up your walls with such pictures as West's "Death on a Pale Horse," or
+Tintoretto's "Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them, if you
+have pictures, with "The Hawking Party," and "The Mill by the Mountain
+Stream," and "The Fox Hunt," and "The Children Amid Flowers," and
+"The Harvest Scene," and "The Saturday Night Marketing."
+
+
+CHEERFUL HOMES.
+
+Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's
+frisk, and quail's whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the
+rock at the mountain-top clear down to the meadow ferns under the
+shadow of the steep, comes looking for the steepest place to leap off
+at, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled
+with tempest and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every
+mountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam,
+and there were nothing but simooms blowing among the hills, and there
+were neither lark's carol nor humming bird's trill, nor waterfall's
+dash, but only a bear's bark, and panther's scream, and wolf's howl,
+then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when
+God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with
+gladness, let us take into our home circle all innocent hilarity, all
+brightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad
+girls in preparation for bad men and bad women.
+
+Above all, my friends, take into your homes Christian principle. Can
+it be that in any of the comfortable homes of my congregation the
+voice of prayer is never lifted? What! No supplication at night for
+protection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care? How, my
+brother, my sister, will you answer God in the Day of Judgment, with
+reference to your children? It is a plain question and therefore I ask
+it. In the tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour out His
+fury upon the families that call not upon His name. O parents! when
+you are dead and gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of the
+tombstones will your children look back and think of father and mother
+at family prayer? Will they take the old family Bible and open it and
+see the mark of tears of contrition and tears of consoling promise
+wept by eyes long before gone out into darkness?
+
+
+CHILDREN'S CURSES.
+
+Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle in the hearts of your
+children, and you do not warn them against evil, and you do not invite
+them to holiness and to God, and they wander on into dissipation and
+into infidelity, and at last make shipwreck of their immortal soul, on
+their deathbed and in their Day of Judgment they will curse you!
+Seated by the register or the stove, what if on the wall should come
+out the history of your children? What a history--the mortal and
+immortal life of your loved ones! Every parent is writing the history
+of his child. He is writing it, composing it into a song, or turning
+it into a groan.
+
+My mind runs back to one of the best of early homes. Prayer, like a
+roof, over it. Peace, like an atmosphere, in it. Parents,
+personifications of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The two
+pillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. But shall I
+ever forget that early home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun that
+warms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets the star that guided him. Yes,
+when love has gone out on the heart's altar and memory has emptied its
+urn into forgetfulness. Then, the home of my childhood, I will forget
+thee! The family altar of a father's importunity and a mother's
+tenderness, the voices of affection, the funerals of our dead father
+and mother with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees
+making a perpetual arbor of love, and peace, and kindness--then I will
+forget them--then and only then. You know, my brother, that a hundred
+times you have been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I
+have been describing. You have often had raging temptations, but you
+know what has held you with supernatural grasp. I tell you a man who
+has had such a good home as that never gets over it, and a man who has
+had a bad early home never gets over it.
+
+Again, I remark, that home is a type of heaven. To bring us to that
+home Christ left His home. Far up and far back in the history of
+heaven there came a period when its most illustrious citizen was about
+to absent Himself. He was not going to sail from beach to beach; we
+have often done that. He was not going to put out from one hemisphere
+to another hemisphere; many of us have done that. But he was to sail
+from world to world, the spaces unexplored and the immensities
+untraveled. No world had ever hailed heaven, and so far as we know
+heaven had never hailed any other world. I think that the windows and
+the balconies were thronged, and that the pearline beach was crowded
+with those who had come to see Him sail out the harbor of light into
+the oceans beyond.
+
+
+THE EXILE.
+
+Out, and out, and out, and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and
+down He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived.
+His disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on
+earth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something
+grand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did
+He sail? Why was this the place of His destination? I question the
+shepherds, I question the camel drivers, I question the angels. I have
+found out. He was an exile. But the world has had plenty of
+exiles--Abraham an exile from Ur of the Chaldees; John an exile from
+Ephesus; Kosciusko an exile from Poland; Mazzini an exile from Rome;
+Emmett an exile from Ireland; Victor Hugo an exile from France;
+Kossuth an exile from Hungary. But this one of whom I speak to-day had
+such resounding farewell and came into such chilling reception--for
+not even an hostler came out with his lantern to help Him in--that He
+is more to be celebrated than any other expatriated one of earth or
+heaven.
+
+
+HOMESICKNESS.
+
+It is ninety-five million miles from here to the sun, and all
+astronomers agree in saying that our solar system is only one of the
+small wheels of the great machinery of the universe, turning round
+some one great centre, the centre so far distant it is beyond all
+imagination and calculation; and if, as some think, that great centre
+in the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when He came
+here. Have you ever thought of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you
+know what homesickness is, when you have been only a few weeks absent
+from the domestic circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from
+home. Some of you feel homesickness when you are a hundred or a
+thousand miles away from the domestic circle. Christ was more
+millions of miles away from home than you could calculate if all your
+life you did nothing but calculate. You know what it is to be homesick
+even amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts, and He
+was athirst, and He was ahungered, and He was on the way from being
+born in another man's barn to being buried in another man's grave. I
+have read how the Swiss, when they are far away from their native
+country, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they
+fall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.
+But oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial
+riches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!
+Homesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
+of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that
+homesickness suffered to get us home!
+
+
+THE HOME-GATHERING.
+
+At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. "Heaven is
+our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in
+all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in
+holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed
+that there is almost always a son or a daughter absent--absent from
+home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.
+Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children
+home with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers
+and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the
+door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
+saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,
+incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and
+sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they
+passed through dry shod.
+
+Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not
+stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly
+sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and
+empires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be
+buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let
+everlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no
+crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful
+home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.
+
+
+A DREAM.
+
+One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around
+about me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter--on the lounge, half
+awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.
+It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the
+cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical
+fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than
+Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for
+thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I
+saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I
+saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off
+this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter
+at the forge?" but they never put off the holiday attire.
+
+And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the
+dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills,
+the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers
+and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I
+see. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: "Where
+do the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they
+sit?" And the answer was made me:
+
+
+"WE HAVE NO POOR
+
+in this country." And then I wandered out to find the hovels of the
+destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a
+tear could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was bewildered, and I
+sat down under the branches of a great tree, and I said: "Where am I?
+And whence comes all this scene?"
+
+And then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and
+across the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all
+about me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as
+they shouted I thought I knew their voices; but then they were so
+gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed
+that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped
+their hands and shouted "Welcome, welcome!" the mystery all vanished,
+and I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all
+together again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around, and I
+said; "Are we all here?" and the voices of many generations responded
+"All here!" And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks,
+and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and
+the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all
+together began to leap and shout and sing: "Home, home, home, home!"
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  65: 'it' replaced with 'if' in the sentence         |
+    |             "and if you should strike him..."             |
+    | Page 103: seciety replaced with society                   |
+    | Page 193: Christion replaced with Christian               |
+    | Page 209: beqeath replaced with bequeath                  |
+    | Page 209: wordliness replaced for worldliness             |
+    | Page 276: couse replaced with course                      |
+    |                                                           |
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+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wedding Ring
+       A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those
+              Contemplating Matrimony
+
+Author: T. De Witt Talmage
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2007 [EBook #22343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEDDING RING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.<br />
+For a complete list, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<h1>The Wedding Ring.</h1>
+
+<h4>A Series of Discourses for Husbands and<br />
+Wives and Those Contemplating<br />
+Matrimony.</h4>
+
+<div class="img">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/frontis.jpg" width="60%" alt="Wedding" /></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>T. DE WITT TALMAGE.</h2>
+
+
+<h4><i>Reprinted from THE CHRISTIAN HERALD.</i></h4>
+
+
+<h5>PUBLISHED BY<br />
+THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,<br />
+<span class="sc">Louis Klopsch</span>, Proprietor,<br />
+BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK</h5>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>Copyright, 1896,<br />
+<span class="sc">By Louis Klopsch.</span></h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td width="80%" class="tdl"><a href="#THE_CHOICE_WIFE">The Choice of a Wife,</a></td>
+  <td width="20%" class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_CHOICE_OF_A_HUSBAND">The Choice of a Husband,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">24</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#CLANDESTINE_MARRIAGE">Clandestine Marriage,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">42</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#DUTIES_OF_HUSBANDS_TO_WIVES">Duties of Husbands to Wives,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#DUTIES_OF_WIVES_TO_HUSBANDS">Duties of Wives to Husbands,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">78</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#COSTUME_AND_MORALS">Costume and Morals,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">95</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#HUSBANDS_AND_WIVES">Husbands and Wives,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">114</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#MATRIMONIAL_DISCORDS">Matrimonial Discords,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">136</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#HOTELS_VERSUS_HOMES">Hotels Versus Home,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">148</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#EASY_DIVORCE">Easy Divorce,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">166</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#MATERNITY">Maternity,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">184</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_CHILDRENS_PATRIMONY">The Children's Patrimony,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">198</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_MOTHER_OF_ALL">The Mother of All,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">217</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#SISTERLY_INFLUENCE">Sisterly Influence,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">234</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#TRIALS_OF_HOUSEKEEPING">Trials of Housekeeping,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">252</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#WOMAN_ENTHRONED">Woman Enthroned,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">268</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_OLD_FOLKS_VISIT">Old Folks' Visit,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">286</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#THE_DOMESTIC_CIRCLE">Home, Sweet Home,</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">303</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_CHOICE_WIFE" id="THE_CHOICE_WIFE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span><br />
+
+<h1>The Wedding Ring.</h1>
+
+<h3>THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+uncircumcised Philistines?"<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Judges 14:3.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to
+marriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in
+asking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with
+her looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the
+hostile families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining, and saturnine
+creature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit
+him forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically
+saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your
+own country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you
+propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of
+lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a
+Philistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no
+pomegranates? Is there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>never a woman among the daughters of thy
+brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of
+the uncircumcised Philistines?"</p>
+
+
+<h4>BEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.</h4>
+
+<p>Excuseless was he for such a choice in a land and amid a race
+celebrated for female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of
+which self-denying Abigail, and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam,
+and pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary, who hugged to her heart
+the blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded
+in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye, the
+gracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only
+typical of the greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise
+excuseless is any man in our time who makes lifelong alliance with any
+one who, because of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or
+intellectual vanity, or <i>moral twistification</i>, may be said to be of
+the Philistines.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS.</h4>
+
+<p>The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such
+splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,
+motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>have
+not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not
+only man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is
+the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea,
+during the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened
+for female education, the women of the country are better educated
+than the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality
+at the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have
+difficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make
+appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of
+good womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour
+I entered this life until now, I hope the delusion will last until I
+embark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this
+course of sermons something that seems severe, I am neither cynical
+nor disgruntled.</p>
+
+
+<h4>NO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.</h4>
+
+<p>There are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every
+home of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women,
+self-sacrificing women, holy women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the
+feet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the
+person of His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>spectacled
+grandmothers Lois, bending over Bibles whose precepts they have
+followed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women
+that are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to
+bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all
+their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except
+those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and
+more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all
+this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some
+of you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of
+you from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my
+text: "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+uncircumcised Philistines?"</p>
+
+
+<h4>MARRIAGE NOT FOR ALL.</h4>
+
+<p>That marriage is the destination of the human race is a mistake that I
+want to correct before I go further. There are multitudes who never
+will marry, and still greater multitudes who are not fit to marry. In
+Great Britain to-day there are nine hundred and forty-eight thousand
+more women than men, and that, I understand, is about the ratio in
+America. By mathematical and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>inexorable law, you see, millions of
+women will never marry. The supply for matrimony is greater than the
+demand, the first lesson of which is that every woman ought to prepare
+to take care of herself if need be. Then there are thousands of men
+who have no right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of
+character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman.
+Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so
+that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is
+unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his
+purity. What right have <i>you, O masculine beast</i>! whose life has been
+loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in
+the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a
+dove?</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FIRST STEP.</h4>
+
+<p>But the majority of you will marry, and have a right to marry, and as
+your religious teacher I wish to say to these men, in the choice of a
+wife first of all seek divine direction. About thirty-five years ago,
+when Martin Farquhar Tupper, the English poet, urged men to prayer
+before they decided upon matrimonial association, people laughed. And
+some of them have lived to laugh on the other side of their mouth.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+<h4>EMINENT BLUNDERERS.</h4>
+
+<p>The need of divine direction I argue from the fact that so many men,
+and some of them strong and wise, have wrecked their lives at this
+juncture. Witness Samson and this woman of Timnath! Witness
+<i>Socrates</i>, pecked of the historical Xantippe! Witness <i>Job</i>, whose
+wife had nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses
+of profanity! Witness <i>Ananias</i>, a liar, who might perhaps have been
+cured by a truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as
+himself&mdash;Sapphira! Witness <i>John Wesley</i>, one of the best men that
+ever lived, united to one of the most outrageous and scandalous of
+women, who sat in City Road Chapel, making mouths at him while he
+preached! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of <i>John Ruskin</i>,
+the great art essayist, and <i>Frederick W. Robertson</i>, the great
+preacher! Witness a thousand</p>
+
+
+<h4>HELLS ON EARTH</h4>
+
+<p>kindled by unworthy wives, termagants that scold like a March
+north-easter; female spendthrifts, that put their husbands into
+fraudulent schemes to get money enough to meet the lavishment of
+domestic expenditure; <i>opium-using women</i>&mdash;about four hundred thousand
+of them in the United States&mdash;who will have the drug, though it should
+cause the eternal damnation of the whole <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>household; heartless and
+overbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet
+married&mdash;married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build
+the low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't
+stand it at home. On this sea of matrimony, where so many have been
+wrecked, am I not right in advising divine pilotage?</p>
+
+
+<h4>NUMEROUS PITFALLS.</h4>
+
+<p>Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that
+society is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom
+they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the
+dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster,
+and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their
+work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological
+hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he
+offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands.
+They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are
+so different from the sample by which they bargained. They were simply
+swindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's
+Evangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for Martha Washington.</p>
+
+<p>Aye, as the Indian, chief boasts, of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>scalps he has taken, so
+there are in society to-day many coquettes who boast of the masculine
+hearts they have captured. And these women, though they may live amid
+richest upholstery, are not so honorable as the cyprians of the
+street, for these advertise their infamy, while the former profess
+heaven while they mean hell.</p>
+
+<p>There is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad it is no wonder that
+some cannot tell the genuine coin from the base. Do you not realize
+you need divine guidance when I remind you that mistake is possible in
+this important affair, and, if made, is irrevocable?</p>
+
+
+<h4>A MISTAKE IRREPARABLE.</h4>
+
+<p>The worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You
+see, it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the
+more galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, and in
+your presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you on
+the opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were
+united, might take the ring off of the finger, might rend the
+wedding-veil asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from the family
+Bible record, but all that would fail to unmarry you. It is better not
+to make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men and women
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>do not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and how
+are you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? There is only one Being
+in the universe who can tell you whom to choose, and that is the Lord
+of Paradise. He made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each
+other. Adam had not a large group of women from whom to select his
+wife, but it is fortunate, judging from some mistakes which she
+afterward made, that it was Eve or nothing.</p>
+
+<p>There is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly
+as Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was
+made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his
+twenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely
+upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three
+possibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate
+of Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth,
+whose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson,
+the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing
+and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to
+the audience and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to
+be married to this woman;" by the fate of Bulwer, the novelist, whose
+wife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>her a beautiful
+house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the
+dozen dogs whom she entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton,
+who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called
+her a rose, the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be
+so, for I feel the thorns daily;" by the fate of an Englishman whose
+wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the
+sea; by the fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose wife threw a
+cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment&mdash;by
+all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you
+to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial
+state, which decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two
+hells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell
+hereafter.</p>
+
+
+<h4>NOBLE WIVES.</h4>
+
+<p>By the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her husband was pleading in
+court, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression
+he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from
+prison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be
+injurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one
+of the bookcases; by the good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>fortune of Roland, in Louis' time,
+whose wife translated and composed for her husband, while Secretary of
+the Interior&mdash;talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the
+happiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable
+of being prime counsellor and companion in brightness and in
+grief&mdash;pray to Almighty God, morning, noon, and night that at the
+right time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest,
+loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not sent to you, that you may
+be sent to her.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AVOID MATCHMAKERS.</h4>
+
+<p>At this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance
+be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every
+community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These
+brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious
+innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis,
+and that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human
+being, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who
+is ignorant of the future, give such direction as you require at such
+a crisis?</p>
+
+<p>Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine
+guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>of Solomon,
+whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was
+multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great
+wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud
+tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he
+retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment.
+And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a
+mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering.
+And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is better to dwell in the
+corner of the housetop than with <i>a brawling woman</i> in a wide house."
+And one day during the rainy season the water leaked through the roof
+of the palace and began to drop in a pail or pan set there to catch
+it. And at one side of him all day long the water went drop! drop!
+drop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about
+this, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words
+falling on his ear in ceaseless pelting&mdash;drop! drop! drop! and he
+seized his pen and wrote: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day
+and <i>a contentious woman</i> are alike." If Solomon had been as prayerful
+at the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how much domestic
+infelicity he would have avoided!</p>
+
+<p>But prayer about this will amount to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>nothing unless you pray soon
+enough. Wait until you are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul
+is disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will
+answer your own prayers, and you will mistake your own infatuation for
+the voice of God.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AVOID SCOFFERS.</h4>
+
+<p>If you have this prayerful spirit you will surely avoid all female
+scoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of
+them in all communities. It must be told that, though the only
+influence that keeps woman from being estimated and treated as a
+slave&mdash;aye, as a brute and a beast of burden&mdash;is Christianity, since
+where it is not dominant she is so treated, yet there are women who
+will so far forget themselves and forget their God that they will go
+and hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most sacred
+things of the soul. A good woman, over-persuaded by her husband, may
+go once to hear such a tirade against the Christian religion, not
+fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice.</p>
+
+<p>A woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of religion, said to me: "I
+was persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecturer once,
+but going home, I said to him: 'My dear husband, I would not go <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>again
+though my declinature should result in our divorcement forever.'" And
+the woman was right. If after all that Christ and Christianity have
+done for a woman, she can go again and again to hear such assaults,
+she is <i>an awful creature</i>, and you had better not come near such a
+reeking lepress. She needs to be washed, and for three weeks to be
+soaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year, fumigated, before she
+is fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a
+Christian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian
+religion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in
+a life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.</h4>
+
+<p>What you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine,
+not a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping
+gadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as
+to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul,
+one that cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep.
+There will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will
+both want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you!
+When your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in
+heaven, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>and not charge upon you with a bitter, "I told you so." As
+far as I can analyze it, <i>sincerity and earnestness</i> are the
+foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to
+get that, and you get nothing but what you will wish you never had
+got.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.</h4>
+
+<p>Don't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his
+eye settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine
+wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice
+except a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of
+the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God
+gives it He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the
+good <i>Princess of Wales</i> dismounted from the railtrain last summer,
+and I saw her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the
+day before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now
+the wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the
+Princess passed through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and
+those who could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their
+stupor, would get up on their elbows to look at her, and wan and
+wasted lips prayed an audible prayer: "God bless the Princess of
+Wales! Doesn't she look beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!
+Explosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a
+scoundrel with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive
+his chariot wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts
+and gullies. But there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,
+whom a rough and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and though
+their features may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy,
+yet they have graces of soul that will keep them attractive for time
+and glorious through all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>There are two or three circumstances in which the plainest wife is a
+queen of beauty to her husband, whatever her stature or profile. By
+financial panic or betrayal of business partner, the man goes down,
+and returning to his home that evening he says: "<i>I am ruined</i>; I am
+in disgrace forever; I care not whether I live or die." It is an
+agitated story he is telling in the household that winter night. He
+says: "The furniture must go, the house must go, the social position
+must go," and from being sought for obsequiously they must be
+cold-shouldered everywhere. After he ceases talking, and the wife has
+heard all in silence, she says: "Is that all? Why, you had nothing
+when I married you, and you have only come back to where you started.
+If <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>you think that my happiness and that of the children depend on
+these trappings, you do not know me, though we have lived together
+thirty years. God is not dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not
+suspended payment, and if you don't mind, I don't care a cent. What
+little we need of food and raiment the rest of our lives we can get,
+and I don't propose to sit down and mope and groan. Mary, hand me that
+darning-needle. I declare! I have forgotten to set the rising for
+those cakes!" And while she is busy at it he hears her humming
+Newton's old hymn, "To-Morrow:"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It can bring with it nothing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But He will bear us through;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who gives the lilies clothing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will clothe His people too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the spreading heavens<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No creature but is fed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And He who feeds the ravens<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will give His children bread.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Though vine nor fig-tree either<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their wonted fruit should bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all the fields should wither<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor flocks nor herds be there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet God the same abiding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His praise shall tune my voice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For while in Him confiding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I cannot but rejoice."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The husband looks up in amazement, and says: "Well, well, you are the
+greatest woman I ever saw. I thought you would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>faint dead away when I
+told you." And as he looks at her, all the glories of physiognomy in
+the court of Louis XV. on the modern fashion plates are tame as
+compared with the superhuman splendors of that woman's face. Joan of
+Arc, Mary Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the enchantment of the
+court of Charles II., are nowhere.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A WIFE'S DEATH.</h4>
+
+<p>There is another time when the plainest wife is a queen of beauty to
+her husband. She has done the work of life. She has reared her
+children for God and heaven, and though some of them may be a little
+wild they will yet come back, for God has promised. She is dying, and
+her husband stands by. They think over all the years of their
+companionship, the weddings and the burials, the ups and the downs,
+the successes and the failures. They talk over the goodness of God and
+His faithfulness to children's children. She has no fear about going.
+The Lord has sustained her so many years she would not dare to
+distrust Him now. The lips of both of them tremble as they say
+good-bye and encourage each other about an early meeting in a better
+world. The breath is feebler and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of
+it? Just hold that mirror at the mouth, and see <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>if there is any vapor
+gathering on the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors takes the old
+man by the arm and gently says: "Come, you had better go into the next
+room and rest," he says: "Wait a moment; I must take one more look at
+that face and at those hands!" Beautiful! Beautiful!</p>
+
+<p>My friends, I hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal
+sunset. That is a crystalline river pouring into a crystal sea. That
+is the solo of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus. That is a
+queen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at
+eighty-two, seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your
+father and mother went. I wonder if we shall die as well?</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_CHOICE_OF_A_HUSBAND" id="THE_CHOICE_OF_A_HUSBAND"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the
+house of her husband."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Ruth 1:9.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>This was the prayer of pious Naomi for Ruth and Orpah, and is an
+appropriate prayer now in behalf of unmarried womanhood. Naomi, the
+good old soul, knew that the devil would take their cases in hand if
+God did not, so she prays: "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest,
+each of you in the house of her husband."</p>
+
+<p>In this series of sermons on "The Wedding Ring" I last Sabbath gave
+prayerful and Christian advice to men in regard to the selection of a
+wife, and to-day I give the same prayerful and Christian advice to
+women in regard to the selection of a husband, but in all these
+sermons saying much that I hope will be appropriate for all ages and
+all classes.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VOLUNTARY CELIBACY.</h4>
+
+<p>I applaud the celibacy of a multitude of women who, rather than make
+unfit selection, have made none at all. It has not been a lack of
+opportunity for marital contract on their part, but their own culture
+and refinement, and their exalted idea as to what a husband ought to
+be, have caused <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>their declinature. They have seen so many women marry
+imbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or life-time incapables, or
+magnificent nothings, or men who before marriage were angelic and
+afterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and stood back. They
+saw so many boats go into the maelstrom that they steered into other
+waters. Better for a woman to live alone, though she live a thousand
+years, than to be annexed to one of these masculine failures with
+which society is surfeited. The patron saint of almost every family
+circle is some such unmarried woman, and among all the families of
+cousins she moves around, and her coming in each house is the morning,
+and her going away is the night.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BENEFICENT SPINSTERHOOD.</h4>
+
+<p>In my large circle of kindred, perhaps twenty families in all, it was
+an Aunt Ph&oelig;be. Paul gave a letter of introduction to one whom he
+calls "Ph&oelig;be, our sister," as she went up from Cenchrea to Rome,
+commending her for her kindness and Christian service, and imploring
+for her all courtesies. I think Aunt Ph&oelig;be was named after her. Was
+there a sickness in any of the households, she was there ready to sit
+up and count out the drops of medicine. Was there a marriage, she
+helped deck the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>bride for the altar. Was there a new soul incarnated,
+she was there to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement
+she was there to console. The children, rushed out at her first
+appearance, crying, "Here comes Aunt Ph&oelig;be," and but for parental
+interference they would have pulled her down with their caresses&mdash;for
+she was not very strong, and many severe illnesses had given her
+enough glimpses of the next world to make her heavenly-minded. Her
+table was loaded up with Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Doddridge's "Rise
+and Progress," and Jay's "Morning and Evening Exercises," and John
+Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and like books, which have fitted out
+whole generations for the heaven upon which they have already entered.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN.</h4>
+
+<p>"De Witt," she said to me one day, "twice in my life I have been so
+overwhelmed with the love of God that I fainted away and could hardly
+be resuscitated. Don't tell me there is no heaven. I have seen it
+twice." If you would know how her presence would soothe an anxiety, or
+lift a burden, or cheer a sorrow, or leave a blessing on every room in
+the house, ask any of the Talmages. She had tarried at her early home,
+taking care of an invalid father, until the bloom of life had
+somewhat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>faded; but she could interest the young folks with some
+three or four tender passages in her own history, so that we all knew
+that it was not through lack of opportunity that she was not the queen
+of one household, instead of being a benediction on a whole circle of
+households.</p>
+
+<p>At about seventy years of age she made her last visit to my house, and
+when she sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her
+presence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I
+had got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole
+alphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went
+out of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in
+heaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest
+gallery! I saw the other day in the village cemetery of Somerville,
+N.J., her resting-place, the tombstone having on it the words which
+thirty years ago she told me she would like to have inscribed there,
+namely: "The Morning Cometh."</p>
+
+
+<h4>ILLUSTRIOUS SPINSTERS.</h4>
+
+<p>Had she a mission in the world? Certainly. As much as Caroline
+Herschel, first amanuensis for her illustrious brother, and then his
+assistant in astronomical calculations, and then discovering worlds
+for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>herself, dying at ninety-eight years of age, still busy with the
+stars till she sped beyond them; as much as had Florence Nightingale,
+the nurse of the Crimea; or Grace Darling, the oarswoman of the Long
+Stone Lighthouse; or Mary Lyon, the teacher of Mount Holyoke Female
+Seminary; or Hannah More, the Christian authoress of England; or
+Dorothea Dix, the angel of mercy for the insane; or Anna Etheridge,
+among the wounded of Blackburn's Fort; or Margaret Breckenridge, at
+Vicksburg; or Mary Shelton, distributing roses and grapes and cologne
+in western hospital; or thousands of other glorious women like them,
+who never took the marriage sacrament. Appreciate all this, my sister,
+and it will make you deliberate before you rush out of the single
+state into another, unless you are sure of betterment.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A DIFFICULT BUSINESS.</h4>
+
+<p>Deliberate and pray. Pray and deliberate. As I showed you in my former
+sermon, a man ought to supplicate Divine guidance in such a crisis;
+how much more important that you solicit it! It is easier for a man to
+find an appropriate wife than for a woman to find a good husband. This
+is a matter of arithmetic, as I showed in former discourse. Statistics
+show that in Massachusetts and New York States women <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>have a majority
+of hundreds of thousands. Why this is we leave others to surmise. It
+would seem that woman is a favorite with the Lord, and that therefore
+He has made more of that kind. From the order of the creation in
+paradise it is evident that woman is an improved edition of man. But
+whatever be the reason for it, the fact is certain that she who
+selects a husband has a smaller number of people to select from than
+he who selects a wife. Therefore a woman ought to be especially
+careful in her choice of life-time companionship. She cannot afford to
+make a mistake. If a man err in his selection he can spend his
+evenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities by tobacco-smoke; but
+woman has no club-room for refuge, and would find it difficult to
+habituate herself to cigars. If a woman make a bad job of marital
+selection, the probability is that nothing but a funeral can relieve
+it. Divorce cases in court may interest the public, but the
+love-letters of a married couple are poor reading, except for those
+who write them. Pray God that you be delivered from irrevocable
+mistake!</p>
+
+
+<h4>PARTNERS TO AVOID.</h4>
+
+<p>Avoid affiance with a despiser of the Christian religion, whatever
+else he may have or may not have. I do not say he must needs be a
+religious man, for Paul <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>says the unbelieving husband is sanctified by
+the wife; but marriage with a man who hates the Christian religion
+will insure you a life of wretchedness. He will caricature your habit
+of kneeling in prayer. He will speak depreciatingly of Christ. He will
+wound all the most sacred feelings of your soul. He will put your home
+under the anathema of the Lord God Almighty. In addition to the
+anguish with which he will fill your life, there is great danger that
+he will despoil your hope of heaven, and make your marriage relation
+an infinite and eternal disaster. If you have made such engagement,
+your first duty is to break it. My word may come just in time to save
+your soul.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HUSBANDS SELDOM REFORM.</h4>
+
+<p>Further, do not unite in marriage with a man of bad habits in the idea
+of reforming him. If now, under the restraint of your present
+acquaintance, he will not give up his bad habits, after he has won the
+prize you cannot expect him to do so. You might as well plant a violet
+in the face of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing it. You
+might as well run a schooner alongside of a burning ship with the idea
+of saving the ship. The consequence will be, schooner and ship will be
+destroyed together.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>The almshouse could tell the story of a hundred women who married men
+to reform them. If by twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled
+by intoxicants, he is under such headway that your attempt to stop him
+would be very much like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to
+stop a Hudson River express train. What you call an inebriate nowadays
+is not a victim to wine or whiskey, but to logwood and strychnine and
+nux vomica. All these poisons have kindled their fires in his tongue
+and brain, and all the tears of a wife weeping cannot extinguish the
+flames. Instead of marrying a man to reform him, let him reform first,
+and then give him time to see whether the reform is to be permanent.
+Let him understand that if he cannot do without his bad habits for two
+years he must do without you forever.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MEN WEDDED TO THE WORLD.</h4>
+
+<p>Avoid union with one supremely selfish, or so wound up in his
+occupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a
+man who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is
+no room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the
+scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made
+to cut his way through <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>life alone, or a file full of roughness, made
+to be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His
+disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so
+married to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other
+bride is a case of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their
+literary work as was Chatterton, whose essay was not printed because
+of the death of the Lord Mayor. Chatterton made out the following
+account: "Lost by the Lord Mayor's death in this essay one pound
+eleven shillings and six-pence. Gained in elegies and essays five
+pounds and five shillings." Then he put what he had gained by the Lord
+Mayor's death opposite to what he had lost, and wrote under it: "And
+glad he is dead by three pounds thirteen shillings and six-pence."
+When a man is as hopelessly literary as that he ought to be a
+perpetual celibate; his library, his laboratory, his books are all the
+companionship needed.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not
+patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole,
+Gibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would
+have helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,
+and given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's
+overtasked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and
+Gibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean Swift did not deserve a
+wife, from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,
+and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all "Vanessa." The great wit
+of the day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties.</p>
+
+
+<h4>PREDESTINATION IN MARRIAGE.</h4>
+
+<p>Amid so many possibilities of fatal mistake, am I not right in urging
+you to seek the unerring wisdom of God, and before you are infatuated?
+Because most marriages are fit to be made convinces us that they are
+divinely arranged. Almost every cradle has an affinity toward some
+other cradle. They may be on the opposite sides of the earth, but one
+child gets out of this cradle, and another child gets out of that
+cradle, and with their first steps they start for each other. They may
+diverge from the straight path, going toward the North, or South, or
+East, or West. They may fall down, but the two rise facing each other.
+They are approaching all through infancy. The one all through the
+years of boyhood is going to meet the one who is coming through all
+the years of girlhood to meet him. The decision of parents as to what
+is best concerning them, and the changes of fortune, may for a time
+seem to arrest</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+<h4>THE TWO JOURNEYS;</h4>
+
+<p>but on they go. They may never have seen each other. But the two
+pilgrims who started at the two cradles are nearing. After eighteen,
+twenty, or thirty years, the two come within sight. At the first
+glance they may feel a dislike, and they may slacken their step; yet
+something that the world calls fate, and that religion calls
+Providence, urges them on and on. They must meet. They come near
+enough to join hands in social acquaintance, after awhile to join
+hands in friendship, after awhile to join hearts. The delegate from
+the one cradle comes up the east aisle of the church with her father.
+The delegate from the other cradle comes up the west aisle of the
+church. The two long journeys end at the snow-drift of the bridal
+veil. The two chains made out of many years are forged together by the
+golden link which the groom puts upon the third finger of the left
+hand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!</p>
+
+<p>But there are so many exceptions to the general rule of natural
+affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead
+them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are
+thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women
+leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>a worse spectacle
+than that in America&mdash;women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of
+a living husband.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE ADVERTISING BRUTE.</h4>
+
+<p>Avoid all proposed alliances through newspaper advertisements. Many
+women, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been
+led on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who
+write such advertisements are villains and lepers&mdash;all, without a
+single exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will
+tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage
+at a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.
+Put your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion, to see if he will bite.
+Take a glassful of Paris green mixed with some delightful henbane.
+These are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper
+advertisements for a wife.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.</h4>
+
+<p>My advice is: Marry a man who is a fortune in himself. Houses, lands,
+and large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns
+so rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years may
+be gone. There are some things, however, that are a perpetual
+fortune&mdash;good manners, geniality of soul, kindness, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>intelligence,
+sympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole-heartedness.
+Marry such a one and you have married a fortune, whether he have an
+income now of $50,000 a year or an income of $1000. A bank is secure
+according to its capital stock, and not to be judged by the deposits
+for a day or a week. A man is rich according to his sterling
+qualities, and not according to the mutability of circumstances, which
+may leave with him a large amount of resources to-day and withdraw
+them to-morrow. If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor indeed.
+If a man have upright character he is rich. Property may come and go,
+he is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy him out, nothing can
+sell him out. He may have more money one year than another, but his
+better fortunes never vacillate.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AVOID PERFECT MEN.</h4>
+
+<p>Yet do not expect to find a perfect man. If you find one without any
+faults, incapable of mistakes, never having guessed wrongly, his
+patience never having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in temper,
+in habits, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle.
+What would you do with a perfect man who are not perfect yourself? And
+how dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>supernatural
+excellence? What a companion you would make for an angel! In other
+words, there are no perfect men. There never was but one perfect pair,
+and they slipped down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally
+find a man who says he never sins. <i>We know he lies</i> when he says it.
+We have had financial dealings with two or three perfect men, and they
+cheated us wofully. Do not, therefore, look for an immaculate husband,
+for you will not find him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>PLENTY OF GOOD HUSBANDS.</h4>
+
+<p>But do not become cynical on this subject. Society has a great
+multitude of grand men who know how to make home happy. When they come
+to be husbands they evince a nobility of nature and a self-sacrificing
+spirit that surprise even the wife. These are the men who cheerfully
+sit in dark and dirty business offices, ten feet by twelve, in summer
+time hard at work while the wives and daughters are off at Saratoga,
+Mount Desert, or the White Sulphur. These are the men who, never
+having had much education themselves, have their sons at Yale, and
+Harvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work
+themselves to death by fifty years of age, and go out to Greenwood
+leaving large <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>estate and generous life-insurance provision for their
+families.</p>
+
+<p>There are husbands and fathers here by the hundreds who would die for
+their households. If outlawry should ever become dominant in our
+cities they would stand in their doorway, and with their own arm would
+cleave down, one by one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot,
+and every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an army in defence
+in a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is
+not so much the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and
+children, and home that turns enthusiasm into a fury. The world has
+such men by the million, and the homunculi that infest all our
+communities must not hinder women from appreciating the glory of true
+manhood.</p>
+
+
+<h4>FIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.</h4>
+
+<p>I was reading of a bridal reception. The young man had brought home
+the choice of his heart in her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she
+stood in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group, the young man's
+eyes filled with tears of joy as he thought that she was his. Years
+passed by, and they stood at the same parlor on another festal
+occasion. She wore the same dress, for business had not opened as
+brightly to the young husband as he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>expected, and he had never been
+able to purchase for her another dress. Her face was not as bright and
+smooth as it had been years before, and a careworn look had made its
+signature on her countenance. As the husband looked at her he saw the
+difference between this occasion and the former, and he went over to
+where she sat, and said: "You remember the time when we were here
+before. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat
+changed, but you look to me far more beautiful than you did then."
+There is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and many of you know it in
+your own homes.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all the good advice we may give you, we come back to the
+golden pillar from which we started, the tremendous truth that no one
+but God can guide you in safety about this matter that may decide your
+happiness for two worlds, this and the next. So, my sister, I put your
+case where Naomi put that of Ruth and Orpah when she said: "The Lord
+grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her
+husband."</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE WEDDING.</h4>
+
+<p>I imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There
+is much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an
+undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>gladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives,
+but when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is
+preparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its
+wings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and
+at the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you
+think it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with
+brightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To
+have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood
+to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an
+anxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and
+then have her go away to some other home&mdash;aye, all the redolence of
+orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the
+rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious
+congratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are
+suffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you
+have a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or
+thirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and,
+suppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, "Good-bye."</p>
+
+
+<h4>VISIT THE OLD HOME.</h4>
+
+<p>I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write
+often home; for, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose
+their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and
+stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place
+after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on
+father's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you
+will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day
+one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile
+the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to
+yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are
+faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the
+first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted
+than you ever can be to any one else except to God&mdash;I mean your father
+and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Me let the tender office long engage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rock the cradle of reposing age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And keep awhile one parent from the sky."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood
+before me to-day to the God "who setteth the solitary in families."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CLANDESTINE_MARRIAGE" id="CLANDESTINE_MARRIAGE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
+But he knoweth not that the dead are there."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Proverbs
+9:17, 18.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>The Garden of Eden was a great orchard of fruit-bearing trees, bushels
+and bushels of round, ripe, glorious fruit; but the horticulturist and
+his wife having it in charge hankered for one special tree, simply
+because it was forbidden, starting a bad streak in human nature, so
+that children will now sometimes do something simply because they are
+forbidden to do it. This</p>
+
+
+<h4>KINK IN THE HUMAN RACE</h4>
+
+<p>is not easily unsnarled. Tell a company that they may look into any
+twenty rooms of a large house except one, and their chief desire is to
+see that one, though all the others were picture-galleries and that a
+garret. If there were in a region of mineral springs twenty fountains,
+but the proprietor had fenced in one well against the public, the one
+fenced in would be the chief temptation to the visitors, and they
+would rather taste of that than of the other nineteen. Solomon
+recognized this principle in the text, and also the disaster that
+follows <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>forbidden conduct, when he said: "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."</p>
+
+<p>In this course of sermons on "The Wedding Ring," I this morning aim a
+point-blank shot at "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades."</p>
+
+<p>Yonder comes up through the narrows of New York harbor a ship having
+all the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to
+the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted
+off; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and
+lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken;
+all the pumps working to keep from sinking before they can get to
+wharfage. That ship is the institution of Christian marriage, launched
+by the Lord grandly from the banks of the Euphrates, and floating out
+on the seas for the admiration and happiness of all nations. But
+free-loveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from
+another side, and hurricanes of libertinism have struck it on all
+sides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank, and beam, and
+sail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and stanchion. In other words,
+the notions of modern society must be reconstructed on the subject of
+the marriage institution. And when we have got it back somewhere near
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>what it was when God built it in Paradise, the earth will be far on
+toward resumption of Paradisaical conditions.</p>
+
+
+<h4>DEPLORABLE LAXITY.</h4>
+
+<p>Do you ask what is the need of a course of sermons on this subject?
+The man or woman who asks this question is either ignorant or guilty.
+In New England, which has been considered by many the most moral part
+of the United States, there are two thousand divorces per year. And in
+Massachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits, there is one divorce
+to every fourteen marriages. The State of Maine, considered by many
+almost frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred and
+seventy-eight divorces. In Vermont <i>swapping wives</i> is not a rare
+transaction. In Connecticut there are women who boast that they have
+four or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted Protestantism
+is, on this subject, more lax than Roman Catholicism. Roman
+Catholicism admits of no divorce except for the reason that Christ
+admitted as a lawful reason. But Protestantism is admitting anything
+and everything, and the larger the proportion of Protestants in any
+part of the country, the larger the ratio of divorce. Do you not then
+think that Protestantism needs some toning up on this subject?</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+<h4>GROWING POPULARITY.</h4>
+
+<p>Aye, when you realize that the sacred and divine institution is being
+caricatured and defamed by clandestine marriages and escapades all
+over the land, does there not seem a call for such discussion? Hardly
+a morning or evening paper comes into your possession without
+reporting them, and there are fifty of these occurrences where one is
+reported, because it is the interest of all parties to hush them up.
+The victims are, all hours of the night, climbing down ladders or
+crossing over from State to State, that they may reach laws of greater
+laxity, holding reception six months after marriage to let the public
+know for the first time that a half year before they were united in
+wedlock. Ministers of religion, and justices of the peace, and mayors
+of cities, willingly joining in marriage runaways from other States
+and neighborhoods; the coach-box and the back seat of the princely
+landau in flirtation; telegrams flashing across the country for the
+arrest of absconded school misses, who started off with arm full of
+books, and taking rail trains to meet their affianced&mdash;in the
+snow-drifts of the great storm that has recently passed over the
+country some of them, I read, have perished&mdash;thousands of people in a
+marriage whose banns have never been published; precipitated
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>conjugality; bigamy triumphant; marriage a joke; society blotched all
+over with a putrefaction on this subject which no one but the Almighty
+God can arrest.</p>
+
+<p>We admit that clandestinity and escapade are sometimes authorized and
+made right by parental tyranny or domestic serfdom. There have been
+exceptional cases where parents have had a monomania in regard to
+their sons and daughters, demanding their celibacy or forbidding
+relations every way right. Through absurd family ambition parents have
+sometimes demanded qualifications and equipment of fortune
+unreasonable to expect or simply impossible. Children are not expected
+to marry to please their parents, but to please themselves. Given good
+morals, means of a livelihood, appropriate age and quality of social
+position, and no parent has a right to prohibit a union that seems
+deliberate and a matter of the heart. Rev. Philip Henry, eminent for
+piety and good sense, used to say to his children: "Please God and
+please yourselves, and you shall never displease me."</p>
+
+
+<h4>A MATRIMONIAL TRAGEDY.</h4>
+
+<p>During our Civil War a marriage was about to be celebrated at
+Charleston, S.C., between Lieutenant de Rochelle and Miss Anna, the
+daughter of ex-Governor Pickens. As the ceremony was about to be
+solemnized <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>a shell broke through the roof and wounded nine of the
+guests, and the bride fell dying, and, wrapped in her white wedding
+robe, her betrothed kneeling at her side, in two hours she expired.
+And there has been many as bright a union of hearts as that proposed
+that the bombshell of outrageous parental indignation has wounded and
+scattered and slain.</p>
+
+<p>If the hand offered in marriage be blotched of intemperance; if the
+life of the marital candidate has been debauched; if he has no visible
+means of support, and poverty and abandonment seem only a little way
+ahead; if the twain seem entirely unmatched in disposition, protest
+and forbid, and re-enforce your opinion by that of others, and put all
+lawful obstacles in the way; but do not join that company of parents
+who have ruined their children by a plutocracy of domestic crankiness
+which has caused more than one elopement. I know of a few cases where
+marriage has been under the red-hot anathema of parents and all the
+neighbors, but God approved, and the homes established have been
+beautiful and positively Edenic.</p>
+
+<p>But while we have admitted there are real cases of justifiable
+rebellion, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred&mdash;yea, in nine hundred
+and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, these unlicensed departures
+and decampments by moonlight are ruin, temporal and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>eternal. It is
+safer for a woman to jump off the docks of the East River and depend
+on being able to swim to the other shore, or get picked up by a
+ferry-boat. The possibilities are that she may be rescued, but the
+probability is that she will not. Read the story of the escapades in
+the newspapers for the last ten years, and find me a half dozen that
+do not mean poverty, disgrace, abandonment, police court, divorce,
+death, and hell. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret
+is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there." Satan
+presides over the escapade. He introduces the two parties to each
+other. He gets them to pledge their troth. He appoints where they
+shall meet. He shows them where they can find officiating minister or
+squire. He points out to them the ticket office for the rail train. He
+puts them aboard, and when they are going at forty miles the hour he
+jumps off and leaves them in the lurch; for, while Satan has a genius
+in getting people into trouble, he has no genius for getting people
+out. He induced Jonah to take ship for Tarshish when God told him to
+go to Nineveh, but provided for the recreant prophet no better
+landing-place than the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE DIME NOVEL.</h4>
+
+<p>The modern novel is responsible for many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>of these abscondings. Do you
+think that young women would sit up half a night reading novels in
+which the hero and heroine get acquainted in the usual way, and carry
+on their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents,
+the day of marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding group of
+kindred the vows are taken? Oh, no! There must be flight, and pursuit,
+and narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine, and
+parental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and gorgeous. In many of the
+cases of escapade the idea was implanted in the hot brain of the woman
+by a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE SCHEME OF BAD MEN.</h4>
+
+<p>These evasions of the ordinary modes of marriage are to be deplored
+for the reason that nearly all of them are proposed by bad men. If the
+man behave well he has a character to which he can refer, and he can
+say: "If you want to inquire about me there is a list of names of
+people in the town or neighborhood where I live." No; the heroes of
+escapades are nearly all either bigamists, or libertines, or
+drunkards, or defrauders, or first-class scoundrels of some sort. They
+have no character to lose. They may be dressed in the height of
+fashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>padded, and
+diamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye
+and intoxicate the olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts
+of villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of them. "Stolen waters
+are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not
+that the dead are there."</p>
+
+
+<h4>SOCIAL DEGRADATION.</h4>
+
+<p>Fugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies
+woman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was
+not of a higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there would be
+no objections, and hence no inducement to clandestinity. In almost all
+cases it means the lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a man
+marrying a woman beneath him in society may raise her to any eminence
+that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in
+society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable,
+and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can
+afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the
+American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an
+instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an
+affluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five
+dollars a day, provided he keeps very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>busy. Well, many a man has
+lived on five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big
+contract when with five dollars a day he attempts to support some one
+who has lived in a home that cost twenty thousand per annum. This has
+been about the history of most of such conjunctions of simplicity and
+extravagance, the marriage of</p>
+
+
+<h4>OX AND EAGLE.</h4>
+
+<p>The first year they get on tolerably well, for it is odd and romantic,
+and assisted by applause of people who admire outlawry. The second
+year the couple settle down into complete dislike of each other. The
+third year they separate and seek for divorce, or, as is more
+probable, the man becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened waif
+of the street. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is
+pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there."</p>
+
+<p>These truant marriages are also to be deplored because in most
+instances they are executed in defiance of parental wisdom and
+kindness. Most parents are anxious for the best welfare of a child. If
+they make vehement and determined opposition, it is largely because it
+is a match unfit to be made, and they can see for their daughter
+nothing but wretchedness in that direction. They have keener and wiser
+appreciation, for instance, of the certain domestic demolition <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>that
+comes from alcoholism in a young man. They realize what an idiot a
+woman is who marries a man who has not brains or industry enough to
+earn a livelihood for a family. No bureau of statistics can tell us
+the number of women who, after marriage, have to support themselves
+and their husbands. If the husband becomes invalid, it is a beautiful
+thing to see a wife uncomplainingly, by needle, or pen, or yard-stick,
+or washing-machine, support the home. But these great, lazy masculine
+louts that stand around with hands in their pockets, allowing the wife
+with her weak arm to fight the battle of bread, need to be
+regurgitated from society.</p>
+
+
+<h4>REVERSED RELATIONS.</h4>
+
+<p>There are innumerable instances in these cities where the wife pays
+the rent, and meets all the family expenses, and furnishes the tobacco
+and the beer for the lord of the household. No wonder parents put on
+all the brakes to stop such a train of disaster. They have too often
+seen the gold ring put on the finger at the altar turning out to be
+the iron link of a chain of domestic servitude. What a farce it is for
+a man who cannot support himself, and not worth a cent in the world,
+to take a ring which he purchased by money stolen from his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>grandmother's cupboard, and put it on the finger of the bride, saying:
+"With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
+endow."</p>
+
+<p>It is amazing to see how some women will marry men knowing nothing
+about them. No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods
+on credit without knowing whether the customer was worthy of being
+trusted. No man or woman would buy a house with encumbrances of
+mortgages, and liens, and judgments against it uncancelled; and yet
+there is not an hour of the day or night for the last ten years there
+have not been women by hasty marriage entrusting their earthly
+happiness to men about whose honesty they know nothing, or who are
+encumbered with liens, and judgments, and first mortgages, and second
+mortgages, and third mortgages of evil habits. No wonder that in such
+circumstances parents in conjugating the verb in question pass from
+the subjunctive mood to the indicative, and from the indicative to the
+imperative. In nearly all the cases of escapade that you will hear of
+the rest of your lives there will be a headlong leap over the barriers
+of parental common sense and forethought. "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+<h4>INVOLVES DECEPTION.</h4>
+
+<p>We also deplore these fraudulent espousals and this sneaking exchange
+of single life for married life because it is deception, and that is a
+corroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must
+deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot
+deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures
+ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be
+decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto,
+change! Now you see her, and now you don't."</p>
+
+<p>Better to wait for years for circumstances to improve. Time may remove
+all obstacles. The candidate for marital preferences may change his
+habits, or get into some trade or business that will support a home,
+or the inexorable father and mother may be promoted to celestial
+citizenship. At the right time have the day appointed. Stand at the
+end of the best room in the house with joined hands, and minister of
+religion before you to challenge the world that "if they know of any
+reason why these two persons shall not be united, they state it now or
+forever hold their peace," and then start out with the good wishes of
+all the neighbors and the halo of the Divine sanction. When you can go
+out of harbor at noon with all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>flags flying, do not try to run a
+blockade at midnight.</p>
+
+<p>In view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine
+correspondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine
+meetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of
+mutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters
+come for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no
+correspondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open
+your letters. Do not employ terms of endearment at the beginning and
+close of letters unless you have a right to use them. That young lady
+is on the edge of danger who dares not allow her mother to see her
+letters.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CONFIDE IN PARENTS.</h4>
+
+<p>If you have sensible parents take them into your confidence in all the
+affairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour
+than you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have
+toiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your
+best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their
+opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition
+is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim,
+or notion, or prejudice, or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>selfishness, fighting a natural law and
+trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister
+of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things.
+One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr.
+Pitt inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his
+daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.
+Pitt said: "Is the young man of respectable family?" "Yes." "Is he
+respectable in himself?" "Yes." "Has he an estimable character?"
+"Yes." "Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition." The advice
+was taken, and a happy married life ensued. Let ministers and officers
+of the law decline officiating at clandestine marriages. When they are
+asked to date a marriage certificate back, as we all are asked, let
+them peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony was in November
+instead of January, or decline to leave the date blank, lest others
+fill out the record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all our
+States, as it has already been in some of the States, making a license
+from officers of the law necessary before we can unite couples, and
+then make it necessary to publish beforehand in the newspapers, as it
+used to be published in the New England churches, so that if there be
+lawful objection it may be presented, not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>swinging the buoy on the
+rocks after the ship has struck and gone to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>And here it might be well for me to take all the romance out of an
+escapade by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the great Scotch
+poet, where he describes the crazed victim of one of these escapades:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"... Yet had she many days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She lived on alms, and carried in her hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When any asked the cause she smiled, and said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were her sisters, and would come and watch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her deceiver, father, mother, home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In lonely places walked, and ever gazed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With woe too wide to see beyond, she died."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>UNDER THE LIGHT.</h4>
+
+<p>But now I turn on this subject an intenser light. We have fifteen
+hundred lights in this church, and when by electric touch they are
+kindled in the evening service it is almost startling. But this whole
+subject of "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades" I put under a more
+intense light than that. The headlight of a locomotive is terrible if
+you stand near enough to catch the full glare of it. As it sweeps
+around the "Horseshoe Curve" of the Alleghanies or along the edges of
+the Sierra Nevadas, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>how far ahead, and how deep down, and how high up
+it flashes, and there is instantaneous revelation of mountain peak and
+wild beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a thousand
+feet tall, or clinging in white terror to the precipices! But more
+intense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous
+is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the
+most hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I
+quote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole
+emphasis on the word "secret." "God shall bring every work into
+judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil."</p>
+
+<p>What a time that will be in which the cover shall be lifted from every
+home and from every heart. The iniquity may have been so sly that it
+escaped all human detection, but it will be as well known on that day
+as the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, unless for Christ's sake it has
+been forgiven. All the fingers of universal condemnation will be
+pointed at it. The archangel of wrath will stand there with uplifted
+thunderbolt ready to strike it. The squeamishness and prudery of
+earthly society, which hardly allowed some sins to be mentioned on
+earth, are past, and the man who was unclean and the woman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>who was
+impure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns,
+stand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek,
+and hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping
+with fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and
+infernal voices crying, "Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!"</p>
+
+<p>All marital intrigues and all secret iniquities will be published, as
+though all the trumpets spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized
+them, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. Oh, man, recreant to thy
+marriage vow! Oh, woman, in sinful collusion! What, then, will become
+of thy poor soul? The tumbling Alps, and Pyrenees, and Mount
+Washingtons cannot hide thee from the consequences of thy secret sins.
+Better repent of them now, so that they cannot be brought against
+thee. For the chief of sinners there is pardon, if you ask it in time.
+But I leave you to guess what chance there will be for those who on
+earth lived in clandestine relations, when on that day the very Christ
+who had such high appreciation of the marriage relation that He
+compared it to His own relation with the Church, shall appear at the
+door of the great hall of the Last Assize, and all the multitudes of
+earth, and hell, and heaven shall rise up and cry out from the three
+galleries: "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="DUTIES_OF_HUSBANDS_TO_WIVES" id="DUTIES_OF_HUSBANDS_TO_WIVES"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>DUTIES OF HUSBANDS TO WIVES.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide: and he
+lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were
+coming."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Genesis 24:63.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>A bridal pageant on the back of dromedaries! The camel is called the
+ship of the desert. Its swinging motion in the distance is suggestive
+of a vessel rising and falling with the billows. Though awkward, how
+imposing these creatures as they move along, whether in ancient or
+modern times, sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand
+travelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora to Damascus! In my
+text comes a caravan. We notice the noiseless step of the broad foot,
+the velocity of motion, the gay caparison of saddle, and girth, and
+awning, sheltering the riders from the sun, and the hilarity of the
+mounted passengers, and we cry out: "Who are they?" Well, Isaac has
+been praying for a wife, and it is time he had one, for he is forty
+years of age; and his servant, directed by the Lord, has made a
+selection of Rebekah; and, with her companions and maidens, she is on
+her way to her new home, carrying with her the blessing of all her
+friends.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+<h4>THE NUPTIAL MEETING.</h4>
+
+<p>Isaac is in the fields, meditating upon his proposed passage from
+celibacy to monogamy. And he sees a speck against the sky, then groups
+of people, and after a while he finds that the grandest earthly
+blessing that ever comes to a man is approaching with this gay
+caravan.</p>
+
+<p>In this my discourse on "The Wedding Ring," having spoken of the
+choice of a lifetime companion, I take it for granted, O man, that
+your marriage was divinely arranged, and that the camels have arrived
+from the right direction and at the right time, bringing the one that
+was intended for your consort&mdash;a Rebekah and not a Jezebel. I proceed
+to discuss as to how you ought to treat your wife, and my ambition is
+to tell you more plain truth than you ever heard in any three-quarters
+of an hour in all your life.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE RESPONSIBILITY UNDERTAKEN.</h4>
+
+<p>First of all, I charge you realize your responsibility in having taken
+her from the custody and care and homestead in which she was once
+sheltered. What courage you must have had, and what confidence in
+yourself, to say to her practically: "I will be to you more than your
+father and mother, more than all the friends you ever had or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>ever can
+have! Give up everything and take me. I feel competent to see you
+through life in safety. You are an immortal being, but I am competent
+to defend you and make you happy. However bright and comfortable a
+home you have now, and though in one of the rooms is the arm-chair in
+which you rocked, and in the garret is the cradle in which you were
+hushed and the trundle-bed in which you slept, and in the sitting-room
+are the father and mother who have got wrinkle-faced, and
+stoop-shouldered, and dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you
+will do better to come with me." I am amazed that any of us ever had
+the sublimity of impudence to ask such a transfer from a home assured
+to a home conjectured and unbuilt.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A RISKY VOYAGE.</h4>
+
+<p>You would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should
+go down to one of the piers on the North River, and at a time when
+there was a great lack of ship captains, and I should, with no
+knowledge of navigation, propose to take a steamer across to Glasgow
+or Havre, and say: "All aboard! Haul in the planks and swing out,"
+and, passing out into the sea, plunge through darkness and storm. If I
+succeeded in getting charge of a ship, it would be one that would
+never be heard of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>again. But that is the boldness of every man that
+proffers marriage. He says: "I will navigate you through the storms,
+the cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of rocks and
+icebergs. I have no experience and I have no seaport, but all aboard
+for the voyage of a lifetime! I admit that there have been ten
+thousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't hesitate! Tut! Tut!
+There now! Don't cry! Brides must not cry at the wedding."</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE WIFE'S TEMERITY.</h4>
+
+<p>In response to this the woman, by her action, practically says: "I
+have but one life to live, and I entrust it all to you. My arm is
+weak, but I will depend on the strength of yours. I don't know much of
+the world, but I rely on your wisdom. I put my body, my mind, my soul,
+my time, my eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve. Even my name
+I resign and take yours, though mine is a name that suggests all that
+was honorable in my father, and all that was good in my mother, and
+all that was pleasant in my brothers and sisters. I start with you on
+a journey which shall not part except at the edge of your grave or
+mine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than
+I make, when I take her tremendous words, the pathos of which many
+centuries have not cooled:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee;
+for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will
+lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou
+diest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and
+more also, if aught but death part thee and me.' Side by side in life.
+Side by side in the burying-ground. Side by side in heaven. Before God
+and man, and with my immortal soul in the oath, I swear eternal
+fidelity."</p>
+
+
+<h4>ENTITLED TO ADMIRATION.</h4>
+
+<p>Now, my brother, how ought you to treat her? Unless you are an ingrate
+infinite you will treat her well. You will treat her better than any
+one in the universe except your God. Her name will have in it more
+music than in all that Chopin, or Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her
+eyes, swollen with three weeks of night watching over a child with
+scarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May morning. After the
+last rose petal has dropped out of her cheek, after the last feather
+of the raven's wing has fallen from her hair, after across her
+forehead, and under her eyes, and across her face there are as many
+wrinkles as there are graves over which she has wept, you will be able
+truthfully to say, in the words of Solomon's song: "Behold, thou art
+fair, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>my love! Behold, thou art fair!" And perhaps she may respond
+appropriately in the words that no one but the matchless Robert Burns
+could ever have found pen or ink, or heart or brain to write:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"John Anderson, my jo, John,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We clamb the hill thegither;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mony a canty day, John,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We've had wi' ane anither.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now we maun totter down, John,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But hand in hand we'll go;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sleep thegither at the foot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">John Anderson, my jo."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If any one assail her good name, you will have hard work to control
+your temper, and if you should strike him down the sin will not be
+unpardonable. By as complete a surrender as the universe ever
+saw&mdash;except that of the Son of God for your salvation and mine&mdash;she
+has a first mortgage on your body, mind and soul, and the mortgage is
+foreclosed; and you do not more thoroughly own your two eyes or your
+two hands than she owns you. The longer the journey Rebekah makes and
+the greater the risks of her expedition on the back of the camels, the
+more thoroughly is Isaac bound to be kind, and indulgent, and worthy.</p>
+
+
+<h4>LOVERS' PROMISES BINDING.</h4>
+
+<p>Now, be honest and pay your debts. You promised to make her happy. Are
+you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>making her happy? You are an honest man in other things, and feel
+the importance of keeping a contract. If you have induced her into a
+conjugal partnership under certain pledges of kindness and valuable
+attention, and then have failed to fulfill your word, you deserve to
+have a suit brought against you for getting goods under false
+pretences, and then you ought to be mulcted in a large amount of
+damages. Review now all the fine, beautiful, complimentary, gracious
+and glorious things you promised her before marriage and reflect
+whether you have kept your faith. Do you say, "Oh, that was all
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke," and that "they all talk that
+way!" Well, let that plan be tried on yourself! Suppose I am
+interested in Western lands, and I fill your mind with roseate
+speculation, and I tell you that a city is already laid out on the
+farm that I propose to sell you, and that a new railroad will run
+close by, and have a depot for easy transportation of the crops, and
+that eight or ten capitalists are going to put up fine residences
+close by, and that the climate is delicious, and that the ground, high
+up, gives no room for malaria, and that every dollar planted will grow
+up into a bush bearing ten or twenty dollars, and my speech glows with
+enthusiasm until you rush off with me to an attorney to have the deed
+drawn, and the money paid down, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>the bargain completed. You can
+hardly sleep nights because of the El Dorado, the Elysium, upon which
+you are soon to enter.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A WESTERN EDEN.</h4>
+
+<p>You give up your home at the East, you bid good-bye to your old
+neighbors, and take the train, and after many days' journey you arrive
+at a quiet depot, from which you take a wagon thirty miles through the
+wilderness, and reach your new place. You see a man seated on a wet
+log, in a swamp, and shaking with the fifteenth attack of chills and
+fever, and ask him who he is. He says: "I am a real estate agent,
+having in charge the property around here." You ask him where the new
+depot is. He tells you that it has not yet been built, but no doubt
+will be if the company get their bill for the track through the next
+legislature. You ask him where the new city is laid out. He says, with
+chattering teeth: "If you will wait till this chill is off, I will
+show it to you on the map I have in my pocket." You ask him where the
+capitalists are going to build their fine houses, and he says:
+"Somewhere along those lowlands out there by those woods, when the
+water has been drained off." That night you sleep in the hut of the
+real estate agent, and though you pray for everybody else, you do not
+pray for me. Being more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>fortunate than many men who go out in such
+circumstances, you have money enough to get back, and you come to me,
+and out of breath in your indignation, you say: "You have swindled me
+out of everything. What do you mean in deceiving me about that Western
+property?" "Oh," I reply, "that was all right; that was
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke. That's the way they all
+talk!"</p>
+
+<p>But more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who
+by glow of words and personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into
+surroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that
+she exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married
+experience&mdash;treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and
+godless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a
+farm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of a lifetime.</p>
+
+
+<h4>LOVERS' ATTENTIONS.</h4>
+
+<p>My brother, do not get mad at what I say, but honestly compare the
+promises you made, and see whether you have kept them. Some of you
+spent every evening of the week with your betrothed before marriage,
+and since then you spent every evening away, except you have influenza
+or some sickness on account of which the doctor says <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>you must not go
+out. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of
+adulation, and now you think it sounds silly to praise the one who
+ought to be more attractive to you as the years go by, and life grows
+in severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of
+tears&mdash;tears over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way some of
+you used to come in the house in the evening, when you were attempting
+the capture of her affections, and the way some of you come into the
+house in the evening now.</p>
+
+
+<h4>DON'T BE PREOCCUPIED.</h4>
+
+<p>Then what politeness, what distillation of smiles, what graciousness,
+sweet as the peach orchard in blossom week! Now, some of you come in
+and put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say: "Lost money to-day!"
+and you sit down at the table and criticise the way the food is
+cooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch
+up the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in
+that home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic
+autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with
+healthful curiosity, yet they must ask no questions. The wife has had
+enough annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen to fill her
+nerves with nettles and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>spikes. As you have provided the money for
+food and wardrobe, you feel you have done all required of you. Toward
+the good cheer, and the intelligent improvement, and the moral
+entertainment of that home, which at the longest can last but a few
+years, you are doing nothing. You seem to have no realization of the
+fact that soon these children will be grown up or in their sepulchres,
+and will be far removed from your influence, and that the wife will
+soon end her earthly mission, and that house will be occupied by
+others, and you yourself will be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen, fulfill your contracts. Christian marriage is an affectional
+bargain. In heathen lands a man wins his wife by achievements. In some
+countries wives are bought by the payment of so many dollars, as so
+many cattle or sheep. In one country the man gets on a horse and rides
+down where a group of women are standing, and seizes one of them by the
+hair, and lifts her, struggling and resisting, on his horse, and if her
+brothers and friends do not overtake her before she gets to the jungle,
+she is his lawful wife. In another land the masculine candidate for
+marriage is beaten by the club of the one whom he would make his bride.
+If he cries out under the pounding, he is rejected. If he receives the
+blows uncomplainingly, she is his by right. Endurance, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>and bravery,
+and skill decide the marriage in barbarous lands, but Christian
+marriage is a voluntary bargain, in which you promise protection,
+support, companionship and love.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT.</h4>
+
+<p>Business men have in their fire-proof safes a file of papers
+containing their contracts, and sometimes they take them out and read
+them over to see what the party of the first part and the party of the
+second part really bound themselves to do. Different ministers of
+religion have their own peculiar forms of marriage ceremony; but if
+you have forgotten what you promised at the altar of wedlock, you had
+better buy or borrow an Episcopal Church-Service, which contains the
+substance of all intelligent marriage ceremonies, when it says: "I
+take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day
+forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part,
+according to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my
+troth." Would it not be a good idea to have that printed in tract form
+and widely distributed?</p>
+
+
+<h4>NEVER FLIRT.</h4>
+
+<p>The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else's wives
+than to their own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal
+scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to
+pick up some other lady's pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which
+I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men&mdash;namely,
+husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own
+wives they bestow upon others. They smile on them coyly and askance,
+and with a manner that seems to say: "I wish I was free from that old
+drudge at home. What an improvement you would be on my present
+surroundings!" And bouquets are sent, and accidental meetings take
+place, and late at night the man comes to his prosaic home, whistling
+and hilarious, and wonders that the wife is jealous. There are
+thousands of men who, while not positively immoral, need radical
+correction of their habits in this direction. It is meanness
+immeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife:
+"You can't help yourself, and I will go where I please, and admire
+whom I please, and I defy your criticism."</p>
+
+<p>Why did you not have that put in the bond, O domestic Shylock? Why did
+you not have it understood before you were pronounced husband and wife
+that she should have only a part of the dividend of your affections;
+that when, as time rolled on and the cares of life had erased some of
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>bright lines from her face, and given unwieldiness to her form,
+you would have the reserved right to pay obeisance to cheeks more
+rubicund, and figure lither and more agile, and as you demanded the
+last pound of patience and endurance on her part you could, with the
+emphasis of an Edwin Forrest or a Macready, have tapped the eccentric
+marriage document and have said: "It's in the bond!" If this modern
+Rebekah had understood beforehand where she was alighting she would
+have ordered the camel drivers to turn the caravan backward toward
+Padan-aram. Flirtation has its origin either in dishonesty or
+licentiousness. The married man who indulges in it is either a fraud
+or a rake. However high up in society such a one may be, and however
+sought after, I would not give a three-cent piece, though it had been
+three times clipped, for the virtue of the masculine flirt.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TONE UP.</h4>
+
+<p>The most worthy thing for the thousands of married men to do is to go
+home and apologize for past neglects and brighten up their old love.
+Take up the family Bible and read the record of the marriage day. Open
+the drawer of relics in the box inside the drawer containing the
+trinkets of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellow-colored
+letters that were written before you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>became one. Rehearse the scenes
+of joy and sorrow in which you have mingled. Put all these things as
+fuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fire rekindle the
+extinguished light. It was a blast from hell that blew it out, and a
+gale from heaven will fan it into a blaze.</p>
+
+<p>Ye who have broken marriage vows, speak out! take your wife into all
+your plans, your successes, your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her
+everything. Walk arm in arm with her into places of amusement, and on
+the piazza of summer watering places, and up the rugged way of life,
+and down through dark ravine, and when one trembles on the way let the
+other be re-enforcement. In no case pass yourself off as a single man,
+practicing gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of age, in
+ladies' society, try to look young-mannish.</p>
+
+
+<h4>RESPECT HER PIETY.</h4>
+
+<p>Interfere not with your wife's religious nature. Put her not in that
+awful dilemma in which so many Christian wives are placed by their
+husbands, who ask them to go to places or do things which compel them
+to decide between loyalty to God and loyalty to the husband. Rather
+than ask her to compromise her Christian character encourage her to be
+more and more a Christian, for there will be times in your life when
+you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>will want the help of all her Christian resources; and certainly,
+when you remember how much influence your mother had over you, you do
+not want the mother of your children to set a less gracious example.
+It pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and worldly husband say
+about his wife, with no idea that it will get to her ears: "There is
+the most godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual rebuke to my
+waywardness. Nothing on earth could ever induce her to do a wrong
+thing. I hope the children will take after her instead of after me. If
+there is any heaven at all I am sure she will go there."</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.</h4>
+
+<p>Ay, my brother, do you not think it would be a wise and a safe thing
+for you to join her on the road to heaven? You think you have a happy
+home now, but what a home you would have if you both were religious!
+What a new sacredness it would give to your marital relation, and what
+a new light it would throw on the forehead of your children! In
+sickness, what a comfort! In reverses of fortune, what a wealth! In
+death, what a triumph! God meant you to be the high priest of your
+household. Go home to-day and take the Bible on your lap, and gather
+all your family yet living around you, and those not living will hear
+of it in a flash, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>and as ministering spirits will hover&mdash;father and
+mother and children gone, and all your celestial kindred. Then kneel
+down, and if you can't think of a prayer to offer I will give you a
+prayer&mdash;namely: "Lord God, I surrender to Thee myself and my beloved
+wife, and these dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the past
+and help us for all the future. We have lived together here, may we
+live together forever. Amen and amen." Dear me, what a stir it would
+make among your best friends on earth and in heaven.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A HUSBAND IMPRISONED.</h4>
+
+<p>Joseph the Second, the Emperor, was so kind and so philanthropic that
+he excited the unbounded love of most of his subjects. He abolished
+serfdom, established toleration and lived in the happiness of his
+people. One day while on his way to Ostend to declare it a free port,
+and while at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman at the
+door of her cottage in dejection. The Emperor dismounted and asked the
+cause of her grief. She said that her husband had gone to Ostend to
+see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was
+an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it
+was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose
+kindness and goodness and greatness she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>had an unspeakable
+admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see him
+was simply unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box decorated with diamonds
+surrounding a picture of himself and presented it to her, and when the
+picture revealed to whom she was talking she knelt in reverence and
+clapped her hands in gladness before him. The Emperor took the name of
+her husband and the probable place where he might be found at Ostend,
+and had him imprisoned for the three days of the Emperor's visit, so
+that the husband returning home found that the wife had seen the
+Emperor while he had not seen him.</p>
+
+<p>In many families of this earth the wife, through the converting grace
+of God, has seen the "King in His beauty," and He has conferred upon
+her the pearl of great price, while the husband is an "alien from the
+covenant of promise, without God and without hope in the world," and
+imprisoned in worldliness and sin. Oh, that they might arm in arm go
+this day and see Him, who is not only greater and lovelier than any
+Joseph of earthly dominion, but "high over all, in earth, and air, and
+sky!" His touch is life. His voice is music. His smile is heaven.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="DUTIES_OF_WIVES_TO_HUSBANDS" id="DUTIES_OF_WIVES_TO_HUSBANDS"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good
+understanding and of a beautiful countenance."&mdash;1
+<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">Samuel 25:3.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>The ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen snow, but the wool from
+the backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I
+hear the grinding of the iron blades together, and the bleating of the
+flocks, held between the knees of the shearers, while the clipping
+goes on, and the rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his wife
+Abigail preside over this homestead. David, the warrior, sends a
+delegation to apply for aid at this prosperous time of sheep-shearing,
+and Nabal peremptorily declines his request. Revenge is the cry.
+Yonder over the rocks come David and four hundred angry men with one
+stroke to demolish Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The
+regiment marches in double quick, and the stones of the mountain
+loosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift
+feet, and the cry of the commander is "Forward! Forward!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>A FAIR PROPITIATOR.</h4>
+
+<p>Abigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of
+the hill. She <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>is armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own
+beauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the
+base of the craig, he cries: "Halt! Halt!" and the caverns echo it:
+"Halt! Halt!" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right
+mightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at
+the sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her
+prowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and
+put before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if
+she be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and
+devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.</p>
+
+<p>As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands
+how they ought to treat their wives&mdash;and, though I noticed that some
+of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well&mdash;I now
+take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their
+husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that
+while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you
+did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than
+overbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a
+hundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best
+man they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>hundred of them would say: "At the other end of this pew."</p>
+
+
+<h4>ABIGAIL'S BAD BARGAIN.</h4>
+
+<p>I hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well
+balanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,
+you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was
+cross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her
+heroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole
+regiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home
+and found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story,
+but had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not
+want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way
+to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was
+ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of
+her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she
+could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely
+and splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?</p>
+
+<p>First, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific
+battle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or
+commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning
+to night <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>is in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your
+husband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in
+this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle.
+If he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If
+he do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment,
+remember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his
+place of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man
+has been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him
+out of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on
+his desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone
+wrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and
+forgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him.
+When you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or
+shop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there
+and not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.</p>
+
+
+<h4>RESPECT SELF-SACRIFICE.</h4>
+
+<p>Remember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is
+overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success
+or defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of
+men after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for
+their families. They begin to ask <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>themselves anxiously the question:
+"How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home?
+Would my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go
+out into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My
+eyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy;
+how if I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business
+life and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Some time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks
+married on a salary less than &pound;150&mdash;that is, $750 a year&mdash;he should be
+discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too
+great for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America
+live by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's
+family expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens
+of thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and
+exhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and
+say you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by
+inches that the home may be kept up.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BE LOVABLE.</h4>
+
+<p>I charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as
+she was before marriage. The reason that so often a man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>ceases to
+love his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable. In many cases
+what elaboration of toilet before marriage, and what recklessness of
+appearance after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a slatternly
+woman&mdash;I mean a woman who never combs her hair until she goes out, or
+looks like a fright until somebody calls. That a man married to one of
+these creatures stays at home as little as possible is no wonder. It
+is a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three
+years, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is not required; but, O
+woman! if you are not willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can
+effect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to
+complain if he seek in other society those pleasant surroundings which
+you deny him.</p>
+
+
+<h4>DO NOT COMPLAIN.</h4>
+
+<p>Again, I charge you never talk to others about the frailties of your
+husband.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Some people have a way, in banter, of elaborately
+describing to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a
+husband or wife. Ah, the world will find out soon enough all the
+defects of your companion! No need of your advertising them! Better
+imitate those women who, having made mistake in affiance, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>always have
+a veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention.
+We must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live
+longer with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the
+precursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep
+the awful secret to yourself&mdash;keep it from every being in the universe
+except the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only
+a few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the
+grave, and say: "O Lord, I kept the marital secret! Thou knowest how
+well I kept it, and I thank Thee that the release has come at last.
+Give me some place where I can sit down and rest awhile from the
+horrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I begin the full
+raptures of heaven." And orders will be sent out to the usher angels,
+saying: "Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in the best
+room of the palace, and let twenty of the brightest angels wait on her
+for the next thousand years."</p>
+
+
+<h4>AVOID MEDDLERS.</h4>
+
+<p>Further, I charge you, let there be no outside interference with the
+conjugal relation. Neither neighbor nor confidential friend, nor
+brother, nor sister, nor father, nor mother, have a right to come in
+here. The married gossip will come around, and by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>hour tell you
+how she manages her husband. You tell her plainly that if she will
+attend to the affairs of her household you will attend to yours. What
+damage some people do with their tongues! Nature indicates that the
+tongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is shut in, first by
+a barricade of teeth, and then by the door of the lips. One insidious
+talker can keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up. The Apostle
+Peter excoriated these busybodies in other people's matters, and St.
+Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them a
+sharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the lookout for them, and
+never return their calls, and treat them with coldest frigidity. For
+this reason, better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are
+opposed to them, but I thank God for what are called flats in these
+cities. They put a separate home within the means of nearly all the
+population. In your married relations you do not need any advice. If
+you and your husband have not skill enough to get along well alone,
+with all the advice you can import you will get along worse. What you
+want for your craft on this voyage is plenty of sea-room.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BE INTELLIGENT.</h4>
+
+<p>I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your
+husband. What with these floods of newspapers and books <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>there is no
+excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past.
+If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may
+fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the
+merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the
+mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the
+professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological,
+or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man,
+after having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without
+information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about
+what is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the
+husband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must
+"go and see a man." In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay
+at home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is
+because there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his
+wife than anyone else if she could talk as well.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ADORN THE HOME.</h4>
+
+<p>I charge you, my sister, in every way to make your home attractive. I
+have not enough of practical knowledge about house adornment to know
+just what makes the difference, but here is an opulent house,
+containing all wealth of <i>bric-a-brac</i>, and of musical instrument, and
+of painting, and of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>upholstery, and yet there is in it a chill like
+Nova Zembla. Another home, with one-twentieth part of the outlay, and
+small supply of art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as you
+enter it, there comes upon body, mind, and soul a glow of welcome and
+satisfied and happy domesticity. The holy art of making the most
+comfort and brightness out of the means afforded, every wife should
+study.</p>
+
+<p>At the siege of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown
+by a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from
+the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock
+discharged at him by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But without
+any weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any
+wife may slay all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and mother
+in prosperous circumstances and greatly admired was giving her chief
+time to social life. The husband spent his evenings away. The son,
+fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect
+that the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same
+turn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had
+better save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games
+were introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting
+things to tell her children. One morning the son said:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>"Father, you ought to have been home last night. We had a grand time.
+Such jolly games and such interesting stories!" This went on from
+night to night, and after a while the husband stayed in to see what
+was going on, and he finally got attracted, and added something of his
+own to the evening entertainments; and the result was that the wife
+and mother saved her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was
+not that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that
+ever lived since Abigail at the foot of the rock arrested the four
+hundred armed warriors?</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE TRUE SPHERE.</h4>
+
+<p>Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who
+think the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who
+want to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There
+are women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to
+interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is
+that the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and
+rear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God
+and the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great
+platform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made
+a missionary speech in her life, and at a missionary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>meeting I doubt
+whether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she
+raised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating
+religious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not
+that a better thing to do?</p>
+
+<p>Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing,
+frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
+opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten
+commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the
+complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,
+bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to
+discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent
+and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A PRESSING WANT.</h4>
+
+<p>What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned
+mothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest
+institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should
+have the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the
+old-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry
+wore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the
+Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>days, and was demonstrated
+on the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house
+long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet
+until in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous.
+While there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than
+there ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and
+there are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief
+sphere is outside instead of inside the home.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A DEADLY SIN.</h4>
+
+<p>Hence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a
+nuisance. It is card case <i>versus</i> child's primer, carriage <i>versus</i>
+cradle, social popularity <i>versus</i> domestic felicity. Hence
+infanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians,
+allopathic, hydropathic, hom&oelig;opathic, and eclectic are crying out
+in horror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical
+profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which
+says: "Thou shalt not kill," and the book of Revelation, which says:
+"All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with
+fire and brimstone." And the man or the woman who takes life a minute
+old will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who
+destroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriek <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>of
+Judgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the
+high and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their
+own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination
+of the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a lot of
+infernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the
+Last Day, the crier of the Court shall with resounding "Oyez," "Oyez!"
+declare the "Oyer and Terminer" of the Universe opened, and the Judge,
+with gavel of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and
+the trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and
+patricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and
+infanticides of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or readers
+can say that they knew not what they were doing. Mighty God! arrest
+the evil that is overshadowing this century.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD.</h4>
+
+<p>I charge you, my sister, that you take your husband along with you to
+heaven. Of course this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I
+must take that for granted. It cannot be possible that after what
+Christianity has done for woman, and after taking the infinitely
+responsible position you have assumed as the head of the household,
+that you should be in a position antagonistic to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>Christ. It was not a
+slip of the tongue when I spoke of you as being at the head of the
+household. We men rather pride ourselves as being at the head of the
+household, but it is only a pleasant delusion. To whom do the children
+go when they have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be bound up
+or one of the first teeth that needs to be removed to make way for one
+that is crowding it out, to whom does the child go? For whom do
+children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream?
+Aye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too
+great or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the
+household in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in
+fact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the
+kingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven.</p>
+
+<p>You can do it! Of course God's almighty grace alone can convert him,
+but you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands out
+of heaven, and others garner them for it. If your religion, O wife! is
+simply the joke of the household, if you would rather go to the
+theatre than the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the neighborhood
+in progressive euchre, if your husband never sees you kneel at the
+bedside in prayer before retiring, if the only thing that reminds the
+family of your church relations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>is that on communion-day you get home
+late to dinner, you will not be able to take your husband to heaven,
+for the simple reason that you will not get there yourself. But I
+suppose that your religion is genuine, and that the husband realizes
+that there is in your soul a divine principle, and that, though you
+may be naturally quicker tempered than he is and have many
+imperfections that distress you more than they can any one else, still
+you are destined for the skies when the brief scenes of this life are
+over. How will you take him with you? There are two oars to that
+boat&mdash;prayer and holy example.</p>
+
+<p>But you say he belongs to a worldly club, or he does not believe a
+word of the Bible, or he is an inebriate and very loose in his habits?
+What you tell me shows that you don't understand that while you are at
+the one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and
+it is simply a question whether Almightiness is strong enough and
+keeps His word. I have no doubt there will be great conventions in
+heaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial
+assemblage the saints shall be telling what brought them to God, I
+believe that ten thousand times ten thousand will say: "My wife."</p>
+
+
+<h4>A CONTRAST.</h4>
+
+<p>I put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives,
+and let you see <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his
+salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God
+some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her
+religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly
+maintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was
+her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first
+sent the arrows of conviction to my soul." The other testimony was
+from a dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family
+worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to
+neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet,
+you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." How many glorious married
+couples in heaven&mdash;Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and
+Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth,
+Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of
+them!</p>
+
+<p>As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's
+house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up,
+husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I
+proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I
+pronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and
+that is the shape of the Wedding Ring.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="COSTUME_AND_MORALS" id="COSTUME_AND_MORALS"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>COSTUME AND MORALS.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are
+haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,
+walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their
+feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their
+tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their
+round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and
+the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and
+the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and
+nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,
+and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the
+fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,"<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Isaiah
+3:16, 18-23.</span><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us two thousand six hundred
+years back, and sets us down in an ancient city. The procession of men
+and women is moving up and down the gay streets. It is the height of
+the fashionable season. The sensible men <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>and women move with so much
+modesty that they do not attract our attention. But here come the
+haughty daughters of Jerusalem! They lean forward; they lean very much
+forward&mdash;so far forward as to be unnatural&mdash;teetering, wobbling,
+wriggling, flirting, or, as my text describes it, they "walk with
+stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing as they go."</p>
+
+<p>See! That is a princess. Look! That is a Damascus sword-maker. Look!
+That is a Syrian merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the lashing
+of the headbands, and the exhibitions of universal swagger attract the
+attention of the Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear upon
+the scene, and takes a picture for all the ages. But where is that
+scene? Vanished. Where are those gay streets? Vermin-covered
+population pass through them. Where are the hands, and the necks, and
+the foreheads, and the shoulders, and the feet that sported all that
+magnificence? Ashes! Ashes!</p>
+
+<p>That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FIRST WARDROBE</h4>
+
+<p>in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far
+as our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is
+proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with
+golden <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>sunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a
+sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
+furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and
+scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see
+the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal
+forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the
+Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she
+never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a
+fern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs,
+does it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it
+might go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million
+spears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water&mdash;I mean the
+grass with the dew on it.</p>
+
+<p>When the prodigal came home his father not only put a coat on his
+back, but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor
+apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the
+arrangement of a woman's hair, when he said in his epistle: "If a
+woman have long hair, it is a glory unto her." There will be fashion
+in heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It
+will decide the color of the dress; and the population of that
+country, by a beautiful law, will wear white.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+<h4>THE GODDESS OF FASHION.</h4>
+
+<p>I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I
+have no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject
+of human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in
+this country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to
+fall down and worship. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the
+bodies and souls of ten thousand victims.</p>
+
+<p>When I come to count the victims of fashion I find as many masculine
+as feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were
+the chief worshipper at this idolatrous shrine, and no doubt some men
+in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at
+the more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous
+distribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew
+as for the other.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MASCULINE FOLLIES.</h4>
+
+<p>Men are as much the idolaters of fashion as women, but they sacrifice
+on a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars,
+and club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United
+States the men chew up and smoke one hundred millions of dollars'
+worth of tobacco <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>every year. That is their fashion. In London not
+long ago a man died who started in life with $750,000; but he ate it
+all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for
+some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing
+him three or four hundred dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and
+had only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it
+dressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hours for digestion,
+then walked out on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into the
+Thames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen
+done on a small scale.</p>
+
+<p>But men do not abstain from millinery and elaboration of skirt through
+any superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages
+would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three
+and a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the
+disciples of custom just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so
+tight that they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness, and
+there are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for
+them, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like
+animated checkerboards. I say these things because I want to show you
+that I am impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>in the
+language of the surrogate's office, "share and share alike."</p>
+
+
+<h4>INDELICATE APPAREL.</h4>
+
+<p>As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of
+improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple
+truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it,
+that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the
+temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a
+shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for
+vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can
+come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of
+masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided
+reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer
+of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a
+so-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel,
+ordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself
+immediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make
+vehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of
+the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the
+female costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and
+that fathers prohibit their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>daughters. The evil is terrific and
+overshadowing.</p>
+
+
+<h4>STAGE COSTUMES.</h4>
+
+<p>I suppose that the American stage is responsible for much of this. I
+do not go to the theatres, so I must take the evidence of the actors
+and managers of theatres, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A.M. Palmer,
+and Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have recently told us that the crime
+of undress is blasting the theatre, which by many is considered a
+school of morals, and indeed superior to the Church, and a forerunner
+of the millennium. Mr. Palmer says: "The bulk of the performances on
+the stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come
+just as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law.
+There never have been costumes worn on a stage of this city, either in
+a theatre, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of
+the chorus in recent comic opera productions." He says in regard to
+the female performers: "It is not a question whether they can sing,
+but just how little they will consent to wear." Mr. Bandmann, who has
+been twenty-nine years on the stage, and before almost all
+nationalities, says: "I unhesitatingly state that the taste of the
+present theatre-going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse and
+vulgar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>nature. The Hindoo would turn with disgust at such
+exhibitions, which are sought after and applauded on the stage of this
+country. Our shop windows are full of and the walls covered with show
+cards and posters which should be a disgrace to an enlightened country
+and an insult to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert says:
+"Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community.
+Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say
+nothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like
+that? It is shameful!"</p>
+
+<p>I must take the testimony of the friends of the theatre and the
+confirmation which I see on the board fences and in the show windows
+containing the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose that
+those representations of play-house costume are true, for if they are
+not true, then those highly moral and religious theatres are swindling
+the public by inducing the people to the theatre by promises of
+spectacular nudity which they do not fulfill. Now, all this
+familiarizes the public with such improprieties of costume and
+depresses the public conscience as to what is allowable and right.</p>
+
+
+<h4>DRAWING-ROOM RIVALRY.</h4>
+
+<p>The parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre
+and opera <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>bouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the
+latter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining
+on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass
+the stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will
+clap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half
+because the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform,
+and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly
+attire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor
+adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the
+fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of
+France, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of
+morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.
+Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means
+a contaminated and depraved society.</p>
+
+
+<h4>EXTRAVAGANCE.</h4>
+
+<p>It is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but
+extravagance of costume. This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable
+and ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to
+sell his country in order to get money to support his home wardrobe? I
+declare here before God and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>this people that the effort to keep up
+expensive establishments in this country is sending more business men
+to temporal perdition than all other causes combined. It was this that
+sent prominent business men to the watering of stocks, and life
+insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and
+some of them to the penitentiary, and has completely upset our
+American finances.</p>
+
+<p>But why should I go to these famous defaultings, to show what men will
+do in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when
+you and I know scores of men who are put to their wit's end and are
+lashed from January to December in the attempt? Our Washington
+politicians may theorize until the expiration of their terms of office
+as to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this
+country. It will be of no use, and things will be no better until we
+learn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we
+can pay for.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN INCENTIVE TO DISHONESTY.</h4>
+
+<p>There are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who in the
+vain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other
+folk's wardrobes are dying of muffs, and diamonds, and camel's-hair
+shawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left except <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>what they
+give to cigars and wine suppers, and they die before their time, and
+they will expect us ministers to preach about them as though they were
+the victims of early piety; and after a high-class funeral, with
+silver handles at the side of their coffin of extraordinary
+brightness, it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated out of
+his legitimate expenses! Do not send to me to preach the funeral
+sermon of a man who dies like that. I would blurt out the whole truth,
+and tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's ribbons! The
+country is dressed to death.</p>
+
+<p>You are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public
+building in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to
+have cost, when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid
+more than five thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding dress.
+Cashmeres of a thousand dollars each are not rare on Broadway. It is
+estimated that there are eight thousand women in these two cities who
+have expended on their personal array two thousand dollars a year.</p>
+
+<p>What are the men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes?
+Steal&mdash;that is the only respectable thing they can do! During the last
+fifteen years there have been innumerable fine business men
+shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>in this way: a man
+thinks more of his family than all the world outside, and if they
+spend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe of the
+family across the street that they cannot bear the sight of, the man
+is thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family, and without
+translating his feelings into plain language, he goes into extortion
+and issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody
+else's name at the foot of a promissory note; and they all go down
+together&mdash;the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine,
+the children to be taken care of by those who were called poor
+relations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE TRAGEDY OF CLOTHES!</h4>
+
+<p>Act the first of the tragedy: A plain but beautiful home. Enter the
+newly married pair. Enter simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as
+much happiness as is ever found in one home.</p>
+
+<p>Act the second: Discontent with the humble home. Enter envy. Enter
+jealousy. Enter desire to display.</p>
+
+<p>Act the third: Enlargement of expenses. Enter all the queenly
+dressmakers. Enter the French milliners.</p>
+
+<p>Act the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter princes and princesses
+of New York life. Enter magnificent plate and equipage. Enter
+everything splendid.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>Act the fifth and last, winding up the scene: Enter the assignee.
+Enter the sheriff. Enter the creditors. Enter humiliation. Enter the
+wrath of God. Enter the contempt of society. Enter death. Now, let the
+silk curtain drop on the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights are
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of
+the men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle
+to pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me
+or not.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CURTAILS BENEVOLENCE.</h4>
+
+<p>Again, extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian alms-giving.
+Men and women put so much in personal display that they often have
+nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity&mdash;a Christian man
+cracking his Palais Royal gloves across the back by shutting up his
+hand to hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a Christian woman
+at the story of the Hottentots crying copious tears into a twenty-five
+dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the
+collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know
+but it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to
+fashion&mdash;two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every
+dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him.
+Is not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the
+Old Testament&mdash;is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a
+dollar when he takes but ten? We do not like that. We want to have
+ninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents from you than God. I
+think one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly
+accumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule.
+God says: "Well, if that man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of
+a dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the
+man or woman who is honest with me." The greatest obstacle to charity
+in the Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on
+their table, and women so much on their dress, they have got nothing
+left for the work of God and the world's betterment.</p>
+
+
+<h4>DISTRACTS ATTENTION.</h4>
+
+<p>Again, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You
+know very well there are a good many people who go to church just as
+they go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women
+with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man
+got his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our
+churches the preliminary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>exercises are taken up with the discussion
+of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does
+not strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of
+public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be
+turned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks.
+People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at
+the same time in personal array, to sing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy better portion trace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise from transitory things<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Toward heaven, thy native place!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: "Good Lord, deliver us!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>MENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.</h4>
+
+<p>Extravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or
+they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on
+which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to
+the human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street
+who, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours
+to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of
+absorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be
+powerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left
+of a woman's intellect after giving years and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>years to the discussion
+of such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the
+summer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they
+once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest.
+Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's
+fan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered
+twenty years ago.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BARS HEAVEN.</h4>
+
+<p>Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil.
+It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder
+that shook Sinai declared: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"
+and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the
+Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are
+all easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is
+for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of
+their souls than of their bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up heaven. What would you do
+standing beside the Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to build
+chapels for the poor; or with that Christian woman of Boston, who fed
+fifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New
+Year's Day, giving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>out as a sort of doxology at the end of the
+meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them; or those Dorcases of
+modern society who have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and who
+will get eternal reward for every stitch they take?</p>
+
+
+<h4>PERPETUAL ENVY.</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of costume! The rivalries and
+the competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You
+will always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial
+residence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And
+if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought
+something else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring
+the crow's feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come
+to die you will have a miserable time.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw
+one of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled
+pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them&mdash;a wasted
+life and a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body,
+mind, and soul had been exhausted in the worship of costume, and they
+could not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside they
+were mumbling out their regrets, and saying: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>"O God! O God!" Their
+garments hung up in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them.
+Without any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died
+without hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly
+death-beds on earth are the one where a man dies of delirium tremens,
+and the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her
+faculties of body, mind and soul in the worship of costume.</p>
+
+
+<h4>JUDGMENT TO COME.</h4>
+
+<p>My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn
+on our bodies as well as for what repentances we have exercised with
+our souls. On that day I see coming in Beau Brummell of the last
+century without his cloak; Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old
+age he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and
+Absalom without his hair; and Marchioness Pompadour without her
+titles; and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street, when that was the
+centre of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture.</p>
+
+<p>And in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation,
+while among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who
+wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah,
+who annually made a little coat for Samuel at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>temple; and
+Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue;
+and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the
+wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present
+Christian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the
+kingdom of God. Christ announced who would make up the royal family of
+heaven when He said: "Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my
+brother, my sister, my mother."</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The list of feminine treasures given by the Revised
+Version is more intelligible. It is: "Their anklets, and the networks,
+and the crescents; the pendants, and the bracelets, and the mufflers;
+the head-tires, and the ankle chains, and the sashes, and the perfume
+boxes, and the amulets; the rings, and the nose-jewels; the festival
+robes, and the mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels; the
+hand-mirrors, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils."</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="HUSBANDS_AND_WIVES" id="HUSBANDS_AND_WIVES"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>HUSBANDS AND WIVES.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+and the wife see that she reverence her
+husband."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Ephesians 5:33.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>All this good advice by a man who never married. He lived on to
+fifty-eight years of age, in eminent bachelorhood. Indeed, it was
+better for Paul to remain in single life, because he went on such
+rapid missionary expeditions that no companion could have endured the
+hardship. Celibacy in some cases is better. Such persons accomplish
+under such circumstances that which could not be accomplished in the
+other style of life.</p>
+
+<p>I have known men who remain unaffianced in order that they might take
+care of the children of a deceased brother; and what would become of
+the world without the self-sacrifice and helpfulness of the maiden
+aunts I cannot imagine.</p>
+
+<p>Among the brightest queens of Heaven will be those who took care of
+other people's children. Alas for that household which has not within
+easy call an Aunt Mary! I know that there are caricatures, and
+ungallant things sometimes said; but so far as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>my observation goes,
+they are quite equal in disposition to their married sisters. The
+state of celibacy is honored again by such persons as Macaulay and
+Washington Irving in literature, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix
+in philanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>But while Paul remained in the single state, he kept his eyes open,
+and he looked off upon the calm sea of married life, and upon the
+chopped sea of domestic perturbation. He comes forth in my text to
+say, "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+and the wife see that she reverence her husband;" implying that the
+wife ought to be lovable, so there might be something to love, and the
+man ought to be honorable, so there might be something to reverence.</p>
+
+<p>It is</p>
+
+
+<h4>A MOST CONGRATULATORY THOUGHT</h4>
+
+<p>that the vast majority of people in the married state are well mated.
+When the news is first announced in the outside world of the
+betrothal, there may be surprise and seeming incongruity, but as the
+years pass by it is demonstrated that the selection was divinely
+arranged. There may be great difference of temperament, great
+difference of appearance, great difference of circumstances. That is
+no objection. The sanguine and the phlegmatic temperaments make
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>appropriate union, the blonde and the brunette, the quick and the
+slow, the French and the German. In the machinery of domestic life
+there is no more need for the driving wheel than for the brakes. That
+is the best union generally which has just the opposites.</p>
+
+<p>The best argument in behalf of marriage as a divine institution is the
+fact that the vast majority of conjugal relationships are the very
+best things that could have happened. Once in a while there is a
+resounding exception to the good rule, the attempt being made to marry
+fire and gunpowder, with the consequent explosion in the divorce
+courts; but in the vast majority of instances the conjugal relation is
+a beautiful illustration of what the Psalmist said when he declared,
+"God setteth the solitary in families."</p>
+
+<p>Taking it for granted, then, that you are well mated, I proceed to
+give you some</p>
+
+
+<h4>PRESCRIPTIONS FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS;</h4>
+
+<p>and, first of all, I remark:</p>
+
+<p>I. A spirit of compromise must be dominant. You must remember that you
+were twenty or thirty years forming independent habits and having your
+own way. In the marriage state these habits must be brought into
+accord, and there may be some ingenuity necessary. Be determined to
+have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>your own way, and there will be no peace. Let the rule be: In
+all matters of moral principle your determination shall be iron, and
+in all unimportant matters, willow. Whatever you may think of the word
+compromise in politics, without compromise there is no domestic peace.
+A great many people are willing to compromise, if you will do just as
+they want you to do; but there is no compromise in that. The rule
+ought to be: In all domestic matters, all social matters, all
+ecclesiastical matters, all political matters, firm adherence to
+fundamentals, easy surrender in non-essentials. Be not too proud or
+too stubborn to give up. Compromise! Compromise!</p>
+
+<p>II. I remark, again, that in order to domestic happiness there must be
+a spirit of</p>
+
+
+<h4>CONSULTATION.</h4>
+
+<p>The home ought to be a cabinet, where all the affairs of the household
+and all the affairs of business life come under comparison, inspection
+and advisal. That is an absurd rule we hear abroad in the world, that
+men ought never to take their business home. Ten thousand financial
+failures would have been avoided if men had consulted with their
+wives.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, woman has a capacity to judge of moral character
+which man has not. Before you invite into your <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>business partnership
+any man, you ought to introduce him to your wife, and get her judgment
+as to his capacity and his integrity. After five minutes' conversation
+she will tell you as much about him as you will know at the close of
+twenty years, and perhaps you may find out too late.</p>
+
+<p>A man proposes to come into your business partnership. You take him to
+your home. He tarries a little while, and is gone. You say to your
+wife, "Well, what do you think of him?" She says, "I don't like him at
+all." You say, "It's an absurd thing to form a prejudice against him
+on so short an acquaintance. I have known him for years, and I have
+never known any bad against him." "Well," she says, "I don't know why
+I have formed that opinion, but I tell you to beware. Put none of your
+financial interests in that man's keeping." Ten or fifteen years pass
+by. You come home some night and say, "Well, my dear, you are right;
+that man swindled me out of my last dollar." It is not because woman
+is wiser than man. It is because God has given her that peculiar
+intuition in regard to human character.</p>
+
+<p>Now, you have no right to go into an enterprise which involves the
+homestead, or the education of your children, or the fate of your
+entire family, without home consultation. Of course, all this implies
+that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>you did not marry a fool. If at the marriage altar you committed
+suicide, you had better keep all your business affairs in your own
+heart and head. But let us hope that you have sound common sense
+presiding in your household.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT.</h4>
+
+<p>How much a wife may help a husband's business affairs was well
+illustrated in the case where the wife saved from the allowance of
+herself and the allowance of the family, a certain amount of money for
+a rainy day. After some time the husband, coming home, said: "Well,
+I'm going to suspend payment to-morrow. A few dollars would get me
+through, but I can't get the few dollars, and I'm going to ruin." That
+evening the wife said: "I wish you would hunt up the definition of the
+word 'independence' in Webster's Dictionary. Hunt it up for me." He
+opened Webster's Dictionary, and found the word "independence," and
+right opposite was a $100 bill. "Now," she said, "I would like to have
+you find the word 'gratitude.'" He turned to the word "gratitude," and
+there was another $100 bill. And before the evening was past she asked
+him to read a verse of a certain chapter of the Bible. He opened to
+the verse in the Bible, and there were $500, and before the evening
+had passed, the man had financial <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>relief to tide him over his
+disasters. You call that dramatic. I call that beautifully Christian.</p>
+
+<p>In all expenditures there ought to be consultation. Do not dole out
+money to your wife as though she were a beggar. Let her know how much
+you have, or how little. Appeal to her intelligent judgment, and she
+will be content, and your own disposition will not be irritated. As
+long as you keep a mystery about your business matters she will wonder
+that the allowance is so small. No honorable woman wants to spend more
+money than can be afforded. Come into consultation with her on this
+matter. Show what are all your necessary outside expenses, all the
+money you have for cigars and dinners at Delmonico's, and how much it
+takes for the club-house and for the political campaign, and then have
+her present all the domestic expenses, and then, after consultation do
+your best.</p>
+
+<p>It is a bad sign when a man dare not tell his business transactions to
+his wife. There is something wrong. Suppose you that the gigantic
+forgeries which have been enacted in this country would ever have
+taken place if the wife had been consulted? The wife would have said,
+"Stop! Let us live in one room in the poorest house on the poorest
+street of the poorest town, and have nothing but dry bread rather than
+that you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>should make yourself culpable before God and the law." In
+the vast majority of cases where there has been exposure of great
+frauds, the wife has been the most surprised person in the community.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BANKER</h4>
+
+<p>some time ago misused trust funds, and he went from fraud to fraud,
+and from knavery to knavery, until it was necessary for him to leave
+home before daylight. His wife said: "Where are you going?" "I am
+going to New York," said he "I am going on the early train." "Why,
+isn't this sudden?" she asked. "Oh, no; I expected to go," and then he
+left the room and went up to the room where his daughters slept,
+looked upon their calm faces for the last time, as he supposed, and
+started. He was brought back by the constables of an outraged law, and
+is now in the penitentiary.</p>
+
+<p>Do you suppose that man, with a good wife, as he had, an honest wife,
+as he had, a Christian wife, as he had, could have got into such an
+enormity if he had consulted in regard to her wishes? Consultation is
+the word&mdash;domestic consultation.</p>
+
+<p>III. Again: in order to domestic happiness, there must, in the
+conjugal state, be</p>
+
+
+<h4>NO SECRETS</h4>
+
+<p>kept one from the other. What one knows both must know. It is a bad
+sign when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>one partner in the conjugal relation is afraid to have the
+letters opened or read by the other partner. Surreptitious
+correspondence is always dangerous. If a man comes to you and says, "I
+am going to tell you a great privacy, and don't want you to tell
+anybody, not even your wife," say to him, "Well, now, you had better
+not tell me, for I shall tell her as soon as I get home."</p>
+
+<p>There must be no secrecy of association. You ought not to be unwilling
+to tell where you have been, and with whom you have been. Sometimes an
+unwise wife will have a lady confidante whom she makes a depository of
+privacies which they are pledged to keep between themselves. Beware!
+Anything that implies that husband and wife are two and not one
+implies peril, domestic peril, social peril, mighty peril.</p>
+
+<p>In the vast majority of cases of domestic infelicity coming to
+exposure in the courts, the trouble began by the accidental opening of
+a letter which implied correspondence which was never suspected. In
+the conjugal relations, secrets kept one from another are
+nitro-glycerine under the hearthstone, and the fuse is lighted!</p>
+
+<p>IV. Again: in order to your happiness there must be a spirit of</p>
+
+
+<h4>FORBEARANCE.</h4>
+
+<p>In the weeks, the months, the years that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>you were planning for each
+other's conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was
+observable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known
+the one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you
+are one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of
+faults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having
+found out all of each others imperfections, forbear.</p>
+
+<p>If the one be given to too much precision, and the other disorderly in
+habits; if the one be spendthrift and the other oversaving; if the one
+be loquacious, and the other reticent, forbear. Especially, if you
+both have inflammable tempers, do not both get mad at once. Take turn
+about! William Cowper put it well when he said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The kindest and the happiest pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will find occasion to forbear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And something every day they live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pity, and perhaps forgive."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>V. Again: in order to your happiness, let there be no interfering with
+each other's peculiar</p>
+
+
+<h4>RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.</h4>
+
+<p>If you are a Baptist and your wife a Pedo-Baptist, do not go to
+splashing water into each other's faces! If you are a Presbyterian and
+your husband is a Methodist, when he shouts "Hallelujah!" do not get
+nervous.</p>
+
+<p>If you have strong denominational <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>proclivities, one of you had better
+go to one church, and the other had better go to another church; or,
+surrendering some of your intensity on that subject, as in hundreds of
+cases, come to some such church as the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where,
+while we adhere to the fundamentals of the Gospel, we do not care a
+rye straw for the infinitesimal differences between evangelical
+denominations&mdash;putting one drop of water on the brow, if that is
+enough baptism, and if not, then plunging the candidate clear out of
+sight, if that is preferred&mdash;not caring whether you believe you have
+been foreordained to be saved or not, if you are only saved; nor
+whether you believe in the perseverance of the saints or not, if you
+will only persevere; nor whether you prefer prayer by Episcopal
+liturgy or extemporaneous supplication, if you only pray.</p>
+
+<p>Do not let there be any religious contests across the breakfast table
+or the tea table. It makes but little difference from what direction
+you come toward the riven heart of Christ, if you only come up to the
+riven heart. Yet, I know in many families there is constant picking at
+opposite religious beliefs, and attempt at proselytism. You, the
+father, fight for Episcopacy, and you, the mother, fight for
+Presbyterianism, and your children will compromise the matter and be
+Nothingarians!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>VI. Again: I counsel you, in order to your domestic happiness, that
+you</p>
+
+
+<h4>CULTIVATE EACH OTHER'S RELIGIOUS WELFARE.</h4>
+
+<p>This is a profoundly agitating thought to every fair-minded man and
+woman. You live, together on earth; you want to live together forever.
+You do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your
+association, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God
+with you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is
+because you do not understand Christian stratagem.</p>
+
+<p>Every Christian companion may take his or her companion into glory.
+How? Ask God, and he will tell you how. Perhaps by occasional
+religious remark. Perhaps by earnest prayer. Perhaps by a consistent
+life. More probably by all these things combined. Paul put it
+forcefully when he said: "How knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+save thy husband? how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
+wife?" In this house, how many have been remarried for the skies!</p>
+
+<p>It has become so much the general rule that when in my congregation,
+as I often do, I find a family in which the wife is a Christian, and
+the husband is not, I just say frankly to him: "Now you have got to
+come in. You <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>might just as well try to swim up against Niagara rapids
+as against the tide of religious influence which in this church is
+going to surge you into the kingdom of God. You must come in. You know
+that your wife is right in this matter of religion. She may be quick
+of temper, and you may sometimes lose your patience with her, but you
+know she is better than you are, and you know when she dies she will
+go as straight to heaven as a shot to a target.</p>
+
+<p>"And, if to-day, on the way home, a vehicle should dash down the
+street, and she should fall lifeless, with no opportunity for last
+words, you might have a doubt about what would become of you, and a
+doubt about what would become of the children, but you would have no
+doubt about her eternal destiny. Somewhere under the flush of her
+cheek, or under the pallor of her brow is the Lord's mark. She is your
+wife, but she is God's child, and you are not jealous of that
+relationship. You only wish that you yourself were a son of the Lord
+Almighty. Come and have the matter settled. If I die before you, I
+will not forget in the next world how you stood together here, but I
+will expect both of you. You must come.</p>
+
+<p>"I say it in all Christian love and emphasis, as a brother talks to a
+brother. You must come. You have been united so long, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>you cannot
+afford to have death divorce you. How long it is since you began the
+struggle of life together! You have helped each other on the road, and
+what you have done for each other God only knows. There have been
+tedious sicknesses, and anxious watching, and here and there a grave,
+short but very deep; and though the blossoms of the marriage day may
+have scattered, and the lips that pronounced you one may have gone
+into dust, you have through all these years been to each other true as
+steel.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, to-day, I am going to remarry you for heaven. This is the bridal
+day of your soul's peace. Here is the marriage altar. Kneel side by
+side, take the oath of eternal fidelity, clasp hands in a covenant
+never to be broken. I pronounce you one on earth, I pronounce you one
+for eternity. What God by His grace hath joined together, let not
+earth or hell put asunder. Hark! I hear a humming in the air&mdash;an
+anthem&mdash;a wedding march&mdash;organs celestial played upon by fingers
+seraphic."</p>
+
+<p>I do not think I ever read anything more beautiful and quaintly
+pathetic than</p>
+
+
+<h4>COTTON MATHER'S DESCRIPTION</h4>
+
+<p>of the departure of his wife from earth to Heaven: "The black day
+arrives. I had never seen so black a day in all the time of my
+pilgrimage. The desire of my eyes is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>this day to be taken from me at
+a stroke. Her death is lingering and painful. All the forenoon of this
+day she was in the pangs of death, and sensible until the last minute
+or two before her final expiration. I cannot remember the discourse
+that passed between us, only her devout soul was full of satisfaction
+about her going to a state of blessedness with the Lord Jesus Christ.
+As far as my distress would permit, I studied to confirm her
+satisfaction and consolation.</p>
+
+<p>"When I saw to what a point of resignation I was called of the Lord, I
+resolved, with His help, to glorify Him. So, two hours before she
+expired, I knelt by her bedside and took into my hands that dear hand,
+the dearest in the world, and solemnly and sincerely gave her up to
+the Lord. I gently put her out of my hands and laid away her hand,
+resolved that I would not touch it again. She afterward told me that
+she signed and sealed my act of resignation, and though before that
+she had called for me continually, after it she never asked for me any
+more. She conversed much until near two in the afternoon. The last
+sensible word she spoke was to her weeping father: 'Heaven, Heaven
+will make amends for all!'"</p>
+
+<p>Now let us be faithful in this relation of which I have been speaking.
+Do you want to know</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+<h4>WHAT THE LORD THINKS OF IT?</h4>
+
+<p>Read the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, where he says: "As the
+bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over
+thee." There is a wedding coming which will eclipse all the princely
+and imperial weddings the world ever saw. It was a great day when
+Napoleon took Josephine; it was a great day when Henry VIII. led Anne
+Boleyn over the cloth of gold on the street, the cloth of gold
+reaching up to the palace; it was a great day when the King of Spain
+took Mercedes; but there will be a greater time when the Lord shall
+take His bride, the Church, to Himself.</p>
+
+<p>Long time ago they were affianced, but she has been down in the
+wilderness. He has written her again and again, and the day of
+marriage is fixed. She has sent word to Him. He has sent word to her.
+But, oh! was there ever such a difference in estate? The King on the
+one side, the bride of the wilderness, poor and persecuted, on the
+other. The wealth of the universe on the one side, the obscurity of
+the ages on the other. The pomp of heaven on the one side, the poverty
+of earth on the other. But He will endow her with all His wealth, and
+raise her to sit with Him on a throne forever.</p>
+
+<p>Come, thou bridal morn of the ages! <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>Come! and there shall be the
+rumbling of great wheels, great chariot wheels down the sky, and there
+shall be riders ahead and mounted cavalry behind, the conquerors of
+heaven on white horses. Clear the way! A thousand trumpets blare.
+"Behold! the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him."</p>
+
+<p>Then the charioteers shall rein in their bounding steeds of fire, and
+the King shall dismount from the chariot, and He shall take by the
+hand the bride of the wilderness, all the crowded galleries of the
+universe, the spectators. Ring all the wedding bells of heaven. The
+King lifts the bride into the chariot and cries, "Drive on! drive up!"
+and the clouds shall spread their cloth of gold for the procession,
+and the twain shall go through the gates triumphant, and up the
+streets, and then step into the palace at the banquet, where ten
+thousand potentates and principalities and dominations, cherubic and
+archangelic, with ten thousand gleaming and uplifted chalices, shall
+celebrate the day when the King of Heaven and earth brings home His
+bride from the wilderness. Make haste, my beloved. Be thou like to a
+roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="MATRIMONIAL_DISCORDS" id="MATRIMONIAL_DISCORDS"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>MATRIMONIAL DISCORDS.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Amos
+3:3.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>A church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within
+a world, is spelled by four letters&mdash;Home! If things go right there,
+they go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong
+everywhere. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the foundation of
+Church and State. A man never gets higher than his own garret or lower
+than his own cellar. In other words, domestic life overarches and
+undergirds all other life. The highest House of Congress is the
+domestic circle; the rocking-chair in the nursery is higher than a
+throne. George Washington commanded the forces of the United States,
+but Mary Washington commanded George. Chrysostom's mother made his pen
+for him. If a man should start out and run seventy years in a straight
+line he could not get out from under the shadow of his own
+mantelpiece. I therefore talk to you this morning about a matter of
+infinite and eternal moment when I speak of your home.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+<h4>THE SOCIAL BALANCE.</h4>
+
+<p>As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then
+he gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you
+lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the
+cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience,
+another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the
+enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or
+made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,
+the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It
+is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that
+radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater,
+taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the
+opposites.</p>
+
+<p>I have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a
+driving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the
+centre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives
+to Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them
+with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are
+not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The
+water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>and
+the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and
+the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that
+God has put us, or intended we should occupy.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A RELIC OF EDEN.</h4>
+
+<p>For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in
+still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same
+varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in
+temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
+husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister
+be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and
+Martha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be
+no Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
+The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;
+the bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his
+hand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot
+forth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron
+beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come
+whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but
+there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River
+Hiddekel out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does
+not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an
+addition of ribs.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE HOME ASSAULTED.</h4>
+
+<p>This institution of marriage has been defamed in our day, and
+influences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem
+or a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively
+silent, novels&mdash;their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness&mdash;are
+trying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation
+in regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and
+eternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! It
+is a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or
+hell. Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands! Alas for the
+mingling of the nightshade with the marriage garlands! Alas for the
+venom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas for the white frosts of
+eternal death that kill the orange blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus
+Christ is to assert what is right and to assert what is wrong.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE ASSAULT OF THE SORDID.</h4>
+
+<p>Attempt has been made to take the marriage institution, which was
+intended for the happiness and elevation of the race, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>make it a
+mere commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and lands and
+equipage; a business partnership of two, stuffed up with the stories
+of romance and knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and feminine
+angelhood. The two after a while have roused up to find that, instead
+of the paradise they dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van
+Amburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild-cats. Twenty thousand
+divorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst revolution that
+France ever saw. It was only the first course in that banquet of hell;
+and I tell you what you know as well as I do, that wrong notions on
+the subject of Christian marriage are the cause at this day of more
+moral outrage before God and man than any other cause.</p>
+
+<p>There are some things that I want to bring before you. I know there
+are those of you who have had homes set up for a great many years; and
+then there are those here who have just established their home. They
+have only been in it a few months or a few years. Then there are those
+who will, after awhile, set up for themselves a home, and it is right
+that I should speak out upon these themes.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE BENEFICENT GUEST.</h4>
+
+<p>My first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new home, if it be a
+new home, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>let Him who was a guest at Bethany be in your
+household; let the divine blessing drop upon your every hope and plan
+and expectation. Those young people who begin with God end with
+heaven. Have on your right hand the engagement ring of the divine
+affection. If one of you be a Christian, let that one take a Bible and
+read a few verses in the evening-time, and then kneel down and commend
+yourselves to Him who setteth the solitary in families. I want to tell
+you that the destroying angel passes by without touching or entering
+the door-post sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant.
+Why is it that in some families they never get along, and in others
+they always get along well? I have watched such cases, and have come
+to a conclusion. In the first instance, nothing seemed to go
+pleasantly, and after awhile came devastation, domestic disaster or
+estrangement. Why? They started wrong! In the other case, although
+there were hardships and trials, and some things that had to be
+explained, still things went on pleasantly until the very last. Why?
+They started right!</p>
+
+
+<h4>FORBEARANCE NEEDED.</h4>
+
+<p>My advice to you in your home is to exercise to the very last
+possibility of your nature the law of forbearance. Prayers in the
+household will not make up for everything. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>Some of the best people in
+the world are the hardest to get along with. There are people who
+stand up in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are
+uncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you
+want it. Sometimes it will be the duty of the husband, and sometimes
+of the wife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on your rights,
+and you will have a Waterloo with no Blucher coming up at nightfall to
+decide the conflict.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A GRANDFATHER'S APOLOGY.</h4>
+
+<p>Never be ashamed to apologize when you have done wrong in domestic
+affairs. Let that be a law of your household. The best thing I ever
+heard of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this: that once, having
+unrighteously rebuked one of his children, he himself having lost his
+patience, and, perhaps, having been misinformed of the child's doings,
+found out his mistake, and in the evening of the same day gathered all
+his family together, and said: "Now I have one explanation to make,
+and one thing to say. Thomas, this morning, I rebuked you very
+unfairly. I am very sorry for it. I rebuked you in the presence of the
+whole family, and now I ask your forgiveness in their presence." It
+must have taken some courage to do that. It was right, was it not?
+Never be ashamed to apologize for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>domestic inaccuracy. Find out the
+points; what are the weak points, if I may call them so, of your
+companion, and then stand aloof from them.</p>
+
+<p>Do not carry the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the
+wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband
+be careful where he throws his slippers. If the husband come home from
+the store with his patience all exhausted, do not let the wife
+unnecessarily cross his temper; but both stand up for your rights, and
+I will promise the everlasting sound of the war-whoop. Your life will
+be spent in making up, and marriage will be to you an unmitigated
+curse. Cowper said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The kindest and the happiest pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will find occasion to forbear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And something every day they live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pity, and perhaps forgive."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I advise, also, that you make your chief pleasure circle around about
+that home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband
+spend the most of his nights away from home, of choice, and not of
+necessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the
+cashier. If the wife throw the cares of the household in the servant's
+lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or theatre,
+she may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that
+would confound a French milliner, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>they are orphans. Oh, it is sad
+when a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off
+to the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw
+them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but the jaws of New
+York and Brooklyn dissipation are swallowing down more little children
+to-day than all the monsters that ever crawled upon the banks of the
+Ganges!</p>
+
+
+<h4>A GODLESS MOTHER'S GRIEF.</h4>
+
+<p>I have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on the death of a child she
+had neglected. It was not so much grief that she felt from the fact
+that the child was dead as the fact that she had neglected it. She
+said: "If I had only watched over and cared for the child, I know God
+would not have taken it." The tears came not; it was a dry, blistering
+tempest&mdash;a scorching simoon of the desert. When she wrung her hands it
+seemed as if she would twist her fingers from their sockets; when she
+seized her hair it seemed as if she had, in wild terror, grasped a
+coiling serpent with her right hand.</p>
+
+<p>No tears! Comrades of the little one came in and wept over the coffin;
+neighbors came in, and the moment they saw the still face of the child
+the shower broke. No tears for her. God gives tears as the summer rain
+to the parched soul; but in all the universe the driest and hottest,
+the most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>scorching and consuming thing is a mother's heart if she has
+neglected her child, when once it is dead. God may forgive her, but
+she will never forgive herself. The memory will sink the eyes deeper
+into the sockets, and pinch the face, and whiten the hair, and eat up
+the heart with vultures that will not be satisfied, forever plunging
+deeper their iron beaks. Oh, you wanderers from your home, go back to
+your duty! The brightest flowers in all the earth are those which grow
+in the garden of a Christian household, clambering over the porch of a
+Christian home.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MATRIMONIAL CONGENIALITY.</h4>
+
+<p>I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James
+Mackintosh, one of the most eminent and elegant men that ever lived,
+while standing at the very height of his eminence, said to a great
+company of scholars: "My wife made me." The wife ought to be the
+advising partner in every firm. She ought to be interested in all the
+losses and gains of shop and store. She ought to have a right&mdash;she has
+a right&mdash;to know everything. If a man goes into a business transaction
+that he dare not tell his wife of, you may depend that he is on the
+way either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things which
+he does not wish to trouble his wife with; but if he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>dare not tell
+her, he is on the road to discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the husband ought to be sympathetic with the wife's
+occupation. It is no easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that could
+have endured martyrdom as well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has
+actually been worn out by house management. There are a thousand
+martyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexations of
+the day, around the stove or the table, or in the nursery or parlor,
+to have your husband say: "You know nothing about trouble; you ought
+to be in the store half an hour." Sympathy of occupation!</p>
+
+<p>If the husband's work cover him with the soot of the furnace or the
+odors of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily
+disgusted at the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your gains are one,
+your interests are one, your losses are one; lay hold of the work of
+life with both hands. Four hands to fight the battles; four eyes to
+watch for the danger; four shoulders on which to carry the trials. It
+is a very sad thing when the painter has a wife who does not like
+pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when she has a husband
+who does not like music.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+<h4>GENTEEL BUSINESS.</h4>
+
+<p>It is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited unless her husband
+has what is called a "genteel business." So far as I understand a
+"genteel business," it is something to which a man goes at ten o'clock
+in the morning, and from which he comes home at two or three o'clock
+in the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for doing nothing.
+That is, I believe, a "genteel business;" and there has been many a
+wife who has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the husband
+has given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning of the
+banisters, or the building of the walls, and put himself in circles
+where he has nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine, and get
+himself into habits that upset him, going down in the maelstrom,
+taking his wife and children with him.</p>
+
+<p>There are a good many trains running from earth to destruction. They
+start all the hours of the day, and all the hours of the night. There
+are the freight trains; they go very slowly and very heavily; and
+there are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, and
+they stop very often and let a man get out when he wants to. But
+genteel idleness is an express train; Satan is the stoker, and Death
+is the engineer; and though one may come out in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>front of it and swing
+the red flag of "danger," or the lantern of God's Word, it makes just
+one shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout and a
+wail and a shriek&mdash;crash, crash! There are two classes of people sure
+of destruction: First, those who have nothing to do; secondly, those
+who have something to do, but are too lazy or too proud to do it.</p>
+
+
+<h4>LOVE TO PRESIDE.</h4>
+
+<p>I have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a happy
+home, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the
+domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress
+you give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you
+occupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone. When the
+husband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness
+of voice, by strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of
+domestic bliss has become a despotism that neither God nor man will
+abide. Oh, ye who promised to love each other at the altar, how dare
+you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on your affection.
+It is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it live again. The
+blast from hell that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness
+of darkness forever.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+<h4>A HOUSE NOT A HOME.</h4>
+
+<p>Here are a man and wife; they agree in nothing else, but they agree
+they will have a home. They will have a splendid house, and they think
+that if they have a house they will have a home. Architects make the
+plan, and the mechanics execute it; the house to cost one hundred
+thousand dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread, lights are
+hoisted, curtains are hung, cards of invitation sent out. The horses
+in gold-plated harness prance at the gate; guests come in and take
+their places; the flute sounds; the dancers go up and down; and with
+one grand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the mirth of the great
+town wheel amidst the pictured walls.</p>
+
+<p>Ha! this is happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the
+music; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow of sculpture; sound
+it up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness,
+indeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to
+Happiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers
+and pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and let it be
+a throne; and then let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and we
+will stand around and, all chalices lifted, we will say: "Drink, O
+Queen! live forever!"</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+<h4>LIGHTS OUT.</h4>
+
+<p>But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of
+the impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the
+household come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amid
+the parlor floor. But, alas! as they come back the flowers have faded,
+the sweet odors have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead
+of the Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish,
+with bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her hair.</p>
+
+<p>The romp and joyous step of the dancers who have left seems rumbling
+yet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses
+of the feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into
+blood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors
+catch tangled in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of
+wind comes through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber,
+in which all the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers
+come the words: "Happiness is not in us!" And the arches respond: "It
+is not in us!" And the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by
+invisible fingers, answer: "Happiness is not in us!" And the frozen
+lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>throne of wilted
+flowers, she strikes her bony hands together, and groans: "It is not
+in me!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>HAPPINESS IN POVERTY.</h4>
+
+<p>That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a
+year&mdash;only one thousand&mdash;goes to his home, set up three months ago,
+just after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the door; love sits
+with him at the table; love talks over the work of the day; love takes
+down the Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and they
+kneel, and while they are kneeling&mdash;right in that plain room, on that
+plain carpet&mdash;the angels of God build a throne, not out of flowers
+that perish and fade away, but out of garlands of heaven, wreath on
+top of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then
+the harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one who mounted
+the throne, with eye so bright and brow so fair that the twain knew it
+was Christian Love. And they knelt at the throne, and, putting one
+hand on each head, she blessed them, and said: "Happiness is with me!"
+And that throne of celestial bloom withered not with the passing
+years; and the queen left not the throne till one day the married pair
+felt stricken in years&mdash;felt themselves called away, and knew not
+which way to go, and the queen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>bounded from the throne, and said:
+"Follow me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of everlasting
+love." And so they went up to sing songs of love, and walk on
+pavements of love, and to live together in mansions of love, and to
+rejoice forever in the truth that God is love.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="HOTELS_VERSUS_HOMES" id="HOTELS_VERSUS_HOMES"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"And brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the
+morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to
+the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever
+thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay
+thee."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Luke 10:34, 35.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>This is the good Samaritan paying the hotel bill of a man who had been
+robbed and almost killed by bandits. The good Samaritan had found the
+unfortunate on a lonely, rocky road, where, to this very day,
+depredations are sometimes committed upon travelers, and had put the
+injured man into the saddle, while this merciful and well-to-do man
+had walked till they got to the hotel, and the wounded man was put to
+bed and cared for. It must have been a very superior hotel in its
+accommodations, for, though in the country, the landlord was paid at
+the rate of what in our country would be four or five dollars a day, a
+penny being then a day's wages, and the two pennies paid in this case
+about two days' wages. Moreover, it was one of those kind-hearted
+landlords who are wrapped up in the happiness of their guests, because
+the good Samaritan leaves the poor wounded fellow to his entire care,
+promising that when he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>came that way again he would pay all the bills
+until the invalid got well.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE VALUE OF HOTELS.</h4>
+
+<p>Hotels and boarding-houses are necessities. In very ancient times they
+were unknown, because the world had comparatively few inhabitants, who
+were not much given to travel, and private hospitality met all the
+wants of sojourners, as when Abraham rushed out at Mamre to invite the
+three men to sit down to a dinner of veal; as when the people were
+positively commanded to be given to hospitality; as in many of the
+places in the East these ancient customs are practiced to-day. But we
+have now hotels presided over by good landlords, and boarding-houses
+presided over by excellent host or hostess, in all neighborhoods,
+villages and cities, and it is our congratulation that those of our
+land surpass all other lands. They rightly become the permanent
+residences of many people, such as those who are without families,
+such as those whose business keeps them migratory, such as those who
+ought not, for various reasons of health or peculiarity of
+circumstances, take upon themselves the cares of housekeeping.</p>
+
+
+<h4>QUEENLY CATERERS.</h4>
+
+<p>Many a man falling sick in one of these boarding-houses or hotels has
+been kindly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>watched and nursed; and by the memory of her own
+sufferings and losses the lady at the head of such a house has done
+all that a mother could do for a sick child, and the slumberless eye
+of God sees and appreciates her sacrifices in behalf of the stranger.
+Among the most marvelous cases of patience and Christian fidelity are
+many of those who keep boarding-houses, enduring without resentment
+the unreasonable demands of their guests for expensive food and
+attentions for which they are not willing to pay an equivalent&mdash;a lot
+of cranky men and women who are not worthy to tie the shoe of their
+queenly caterer. The outrageous way in which boarders sometimes act to
+their landlords and landladies show that these critical guests had bad
+early rearing, and that in the making-up of their natures all that
+constitutes the gentleman and lady were left out. Some of the most
+princely men and some of the most elegant women that I know of to-day
+keep hotels and boarding-houses.</p>
+
+<p>But one of the great evils of this day is found in the fact that a
+large population of our towns and cities are giving up and have given
+up their homes and taken apartments, that they may have more freedom
+from domestic duties and more time for social life, and because they
+like the whirl of publicity better than the quiet and privacy of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>residence they can call their own. The lawful use of these hotels and
+boarding-houses is for most people while they are in transitu: but as
+a terminus they are in many cases demoralization, utter and complete.
+That is the point at which families innumerable have begun to
+disintegrate. There never has been a time when so many families,
+healthy and abundantly able to support and direct homes of their own,
+have struck tent and taken permanent abode in these public
+establishments. It is an evil wide as Christendom, and by voice and
+through the newspaper press I utter warning and burning protest, and
+ask Almighty God to bless the word, whether in the hearing or reading.</p>
+
+
+<h4>PROMOTERS OF GOSSIP.</h4>
+
+<p>In these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full
+sway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general
+inspection&mdash;how they look when they come down in the morning and when
+they get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they
+receive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do
+not wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat,
+and how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be
+isolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him:
+Who is he? Where did he come from? How long is he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>going to stay? Has
+he paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some
+crime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong
+about him, or he would speak.</p>
+
+<p>The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out
+about him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his
+door unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been
+inspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the
+way they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the
+question, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a
+monomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but
+minds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot
+sometimes hinder their places from becoming</p>
+
+
+<h4>A PANDEMONIUM</h4>
+
+<p>of whisperers, and reputations are torn to tatters, and evil
+suspicions are aroused, and scandals started, and the parliament of
+the family is blown to atoms by some Guy Fawkes who was not caught in
+time, as was his English predecessor of gunpowdery reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The reason is that while in private homes families have so much to
+keep them busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences
+there are so many who have nothing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>to do, and that always makes
+mischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in
+consultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they
+got to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get
+out of breath before reaching there, and not feel in full glow of
+animosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at
+all. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 are on the same corridor, and
+when one carrion crow goes "Caw! Caw!" all the other crows hear it and
+flock together over the same carcass. "Oh, I have heard something
+rich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it." And the first guffaw
+increases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as
+they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other
+circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the
+top room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that
+evening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until
+autumnal fires sweeping across Illinois prairies are less raging and
+swift than that flame of consuming reputation blazing across the
+village or city.</p>
+
+<p>Those of us who were brought up in the country know that the
+old-fashioned hatching of eggs in the hay-mow required four or five
+weeks of brooding, but there are new modes of hatching by machinery,
+which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>take less time and do the work in wholesale. So, while the
+private home may brood into life an occasional falsity, and take a
+long time to do it, many of the boarding-houses and family hotels
+afford a swifter and more multitudinous style of moral incubation, and
+one old gossip will get off the nest after one hour's brooding,
+clucking a flock of thirty lies after her, each one picking up its
+little worm of juicy regalement. It is no advantage to hear too much
+about your neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking
+care of their faults that you will have no time to look after your
+own. And while you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden yours
+will get all overgrown with horse-sorrel and mullen stalks.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A WRONG TO CHILDREN.</h4>
+
+<p>One of the worst damages that comes from the herding of so many people
+into boarding-houses and family hotels is inflicted upon children. It
+is only another way of bringing them up on the commons. While you have
+your own private house you can, for the most part, control their
+companionship and their whereabouts; but by twelve years of age in
+these public resorts they will have picked up all the bad things that
+can be furnished by the prurient minds of dozens of people. They will
+overhear blasphemies, and see quarrels, and get precocious in sin,
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>what the bartender does not tell them the porter or hostler or
+bell-boy will.</p>
+
+<p>Beside that, the children will go out into this world without the
+restraining, anchoring, steadying and all-controlling memory of a
+home. From that none of us who have been blessed of such memory have
+escaped. It grips a man for eighty years, if he lives so long. It
+pulls him back from doors into which he otherwise would enter. It
+smites him with contrition in the very midst of his dissipations. As
+the fish already surrounded by</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE LONG WIDE NET</h4>
+
+<p>swim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as they please, and with
+gay toss of silvery scale they defy the sportsman on the beach, and
+after a while the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over hand,
+and hand over hand, and it is a long while before the captured fins
+begin to feel the net, and then they dart this way and that, hoping to
+get out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up
+to the very feet of the captors, so the memory of an early home
+sometimes seems to relax and let men out further and further from God
+and further and further from shore&mdash;five years, ten years, twenty
+years, thirty years; but some day they find an irresistible mesh
+drawing them back, and they are compelled to retreat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>from their
+prodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to
+escape the impression, and try to dive deeper down in sin, after a
+while are brought clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.</p>
+
+<p>If it be possible, O father and mother! let your sons and daughters go
+out into the world under the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure
+home. About your two or three rooms in a boarding-house or a family
+hotel you can cast no such glorious sanctity. They will think of these
+public caravanseries as an early stopping place, malodorous with old
+victuals, coffees perpetually steaming, and meats in everlasting stew
+or broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along
+which drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning,
+rapping at the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do not be
+guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.</p>
+
+
+<h4>WHAT A HOME IS.</h4>
+
+<p>A home is four walls enclosing one family with identity of interest,
+and a privacy from outside inspection so complete that it is a world
+in itself, no one entering except by permission&mdash;bolted and barred and
+chained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used
+in law books and legal circles is mightily suggestive&mdash;every man's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>house is his castle. As much so as though it had drawbridge,
+portcullis, redoubt, bastion and armed turret. Even the officer of the
+law may not enter to serve a writ, except the door be voluntarily
+opened unto him; burglary, or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive
+that the law clashes its iron jaws on any one who attempts it. Unless
+it be necessary to stay for longer or shorter time in family hotel or
+boarding-house&mdash;and there are thousands of instances in which it is
+necessary, as I showed you at the beginning&mdash;unless in this
+exceptional case, let neither wife nor husband consent to such
+permanent residence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HAZARDOUS TO MORALS.</h4>
+
+<p>The probability is that the wife will have to divide her husband's
+time with public smoking or reading room, or with some coquettish
+spider in search of unwary flies; and if you do not entirely lose your
+husband it will be because he is divinely protected from the disasters
+that have whelmed thousands of husbands with as good intentions as
+yours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent
+to such a life unless he is sure his wife can withstand the temptation
+of social dissipation which sweeps across such places with the force
+of the Atlantic Ocean when driven by a September equinox. Many wives
+give up their homes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>for these public residences so that they may give
+their entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees,
+and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and
+round and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise and shoots
+off into a tangent. But the difference is, in one case it is a top and
+in the other a soul.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE LARES AND PENATES.</h4>
+
+<p>Beside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around
+the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while
+the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is
+the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them."
+Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge,
+upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home
+are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to
+arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic
+happiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments
+of a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can
+call your own, and are associated with the different members of your
+household, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic
+history. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have
+been gathering until every figure in the carpet, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>and every panel of
+the door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its
+own, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or
+daughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it
+becomes when one can say: "In that room such a one was born; in that
+bed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a
+one had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt
+for her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came
+back from a sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was mother's
+rocking chair." What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!</p>
+
+
+<h4>HOSPITALITY CURTAILED.</h4>
+
+<p>The public residence of hotel and boarding-house abolishes the grace
+of hospitality. Your guest does not want to come to such a table. No
+one wants to run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless
+hyper-criticism. Unless you have a home of your own you will not be
+able to exercise the best rewarded of all the graces. For exercise of
+this grace what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of
+her son to life because she entertained Elisha, and to the widow of
+Zarephath in the perpetual oil well of the miraculous cruise because
+she fed a hungry prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her life
+at the demolition of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>Jericho because she entertained the spies and to
+Laban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of
+his entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his rescue from the
+destroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary
+and Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because they entertained
+Christ, and to Publius in the island of Melita in the healing of his
+father because of the entertainment of Paul drenched from the
+shipwreck, and of innumerable houses throughout Christendom upon which
+have come blessings from generation to generation because their doors
+swung easily open in the enlarging, ennobling, irradiating, and divine
+grace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has been, but
+I have had men and women visiting at my house who left a benediction
+on every room&mdash;in the blessing they asked at the table, in the prayer
+they offered at the family altar, in the good advice they gave the
+children, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament of
+their countenances; and their departure was the sword of bereavement.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had a royal</p>
+
+
+<h4>CUP OF TEN CURVES,</h4>
+
+<p>or lips, each one having on it the name of the distinguished person
+who had drank <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>from it. And that cup which we offer to others in
+Christian hospitality, though it be of the plainest earthenware, is a
+royal cup, and God can read on all its sides the names of those who
+have taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you
+have a home of your own. It is the delusion as to what is necessary
+for a home that hinders so many from establishing one. Thirty rooms
+are not necessary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor
+three. In the right way plant a table, and couch, and knife and fork,
+and a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a young paradise. Just start
+a home, on however small a scale, and it will grow. When King Cyrus
+was invited to dine with an humble friend the king made the one
+condition of his coming that the only dish be one loaf of bread, and
+the most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the
+plainest fare.</p>
+
+<p>Do not be caught in the delusion of many thousands in postponing a
+home until they can have an expensive one. That idea is the devil's
+trap that catches men and women innumerable who will never have any
+home at all. Capitalists of America, build plain homes for the people.
+Let this tenement-house system, in which hundreds of thousands of the
+people of our cities are wallowing in the mire, be broken up by small
+homes, where people can have their own firesides <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>and their own altar.
+In this great continent there is room enough for every man and woman
+to have a home. Morals and civilization and religion demand it.</p>
+
+
+<h4>SMALL HOMES NEEDED</h4>
+
+<p>We want done all over this land what George Peabody and Lady
+Burdett-Coutts did in England, and some of the large manufacturers of
+this country have done for the villages and cities, in building small
+houses at cheap rents, so that the middle classes can have separate
+homes. They are the only class not provided for. The rich have their
+palaces, and the poor have their poorhouses, and criminals have their
+jails; but what about the honest middle classes, who are able and
+willing to work, and yet have small income? Let the capitalists,
+inspired of God and pure patriotism, rise and build whole streets of
+small residences. The laborer may have, at the close of the day, to
+walk or ride further than is desirable to reach it, but when he gets
+to his destination in the eventide he will find something worthy of
+being called by that glorious and impassioned and heaven-descended
+word, "home."</p>
+
+
+<h4>SOMETHING TO SAVE FOR.</h4>
+
+<p>Young married man, as soon as you can buy such a place, even if you
+have to put on it a mortgage reaching from base to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>cap-stone. The
+much abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent
+and provident is the beginning of a competency and a fortune, for the
+reason he will not be satisfied until he has paid it off, and all the
+household are put on stringent economies until then. Deny yourself all
+superfluities and all luxuries until you can say: "Everything in this
+house is mine, thank God!&mdash;every timber, every brick, every foot of
+plumbing, every door-sill." Do not have your children born in a
+boarding-house, and do not yourself be buried from one. Have a place
+where your children can shout and sing and romp without being
+overhauled for the racket. Have a kitchen where you can do something
+toward the reformation of evil cookery and the lessening of this
+nation of dyspeptics. As Napoleon lost one of his great battles by an
+attack of indigestion, so many men have such</p>
+
+
+<h4>A DAILY WRESTLE</h4>
+
+<p>with the food swallowed that they have no strength left for the battle
+of life; and though your wife may know how to play on all musical
+instruments, and rival a prima donna, she is not well educated unless
+she can boil an Irish potato and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet
+sometimes decides the fate of families and nations.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>Have a sitting-room with at least one easy chair, even though you have
+to take turns at sitting in it, and books out of the public library or
+of your own purchase for the making of your family intelligent, and
+checkerboards and guessing matches, with an occasional blind man's
+buff, which is of all games my favorite. Rouse up your home with all
+styles of innocent mirth, and gather up in your children's nature a
+reservoir of exuberance that will pour down refreshing streams when
+life gets parched, and the dark days come, and the lights go out, and
+the laughter is smothered into a sob.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHRIST IN THE HOME.</h4>
+
+<p>First, last and all the time, have Christ in your home. Julius C&aelig;sar
+calmed the fears of an affrighted boatman who was rowing him in a
+stream by stating: "So long as C&aelig;sar is with you in the same boat no
+harm can happen." And whatever storm of adversity or bereavement or
+poverty may strike your home all is well as long as you have Christ
+the King on board. Make your home so far-reaching in its influence
+that down to the last moment of your children's life you may hold them
+with a heavenly charm. At seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of
+the American Senate lay dying at Washington&mdash;I mean Henry Clay, of
+Kentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>and the "old man eloquent,"
+after a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and
+cis-Atlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept
+saying in his dream over and over again: "My mother! mother! mother!"
+May the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy,
+and so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven, in
+which place may we all meet&mdash;father, mother, son, daughter, brother,
+sister, grandfather and grandmother, and grandchild, and the entire
+group of precious ones, of whom we must say in the words of
+transporting Charles Wesley:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"One family we dwell in Him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One church above, beneath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though now divided by the stream&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The narrow stream of death;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One army of the living God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To His command we bow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Part of the host have crossed the flood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And part are crossing now."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="EASY_DIVORCE" id="EASY_DIVORCE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>EASY DIVORCE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"What therefore God hath joined together let not man put
+asunder."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Matthew 19:6</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>That there are hundreds and thousands of infelicitous homes in America
+no one will doubt. If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that
+might be locked up and abandoned; but in many a home there is a
+skeleton in the hallway and a skeleton in all the apartments.</p>
+
+
+<h4>"UNHAPPILY MARRIED"</h4>
+
+<p>are two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox
+minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a hell; they are
+there now. Sometimes a grand and gracious woman will be thus
+incarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with
+Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a
+consecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or
+united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both
+parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and
+his wife smokes and swears, and Froude, the historian, is mean enough,
+because of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>shekels he gets for the manuscript,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> to pull aside
+the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Five,
+Cheyne Row. Some say that for</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE ALLEVIATION</h4>
+
+<p>of all these domestic disorders of which we hear, easy divorce is a
+good prescription. God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as He
+authorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully
+divorced as I have for one lawfully married. But you know and I know
+that wholesale divorce is one of</p>
+
+
+<h4>OUR NATIONAL SCOURGES.</h4>
+
+<p>I am not surprised at this when I think of the influences which have
+been abroad militating against the marriage relation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>For many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about a
+free-love millennium. There were meetings of this kind held in the
+Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Cooper Institute, New York, Tremont
+Temple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most
+prominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great
+promiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the
+tyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women's
+rights, and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short
+curls and short dress and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with
+God because they were created women; while on the platform sat meek
+men with soft accent and cowed demeanor, apologetic for masculinity,
+and holding the parasols while the termagant orators went on preaching
+the gospel of free love.</p>
+
+<p>That campaign of about twenty years set more devils in the marriage
+relation than will be exorcised in the next fifty. Men and women went
+home from such meetings so permanently confused as to who were their
+wives and husbands that they never got out of the perplexity, and the
+criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of woes,
+and this one got alimony, and that one got a limited divorce, and this
+mother kept the children on condition that the father <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>could sometimes
+come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went
+into an insane asylum, and those went into dissolute public life, and
+all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the
+marriage institution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one
+name and sometimes under another.</p>
+
+<p>Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been</p>
+
+
+<h4>POLYGAMY IN UTAH.</h4>
+
+<p>That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has
+poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an
+arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be
+sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of
+the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of
+America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress
+forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where
+they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five
+administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an
+army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked
+from that fortress of libertinism.</p>
+
+<p>Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the
+straw of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in
+proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and
+in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen,
+and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any
+time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did
+more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent
+administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and
+although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than
+the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk,
+talk, talk.</p>
+
+<p>I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have
+had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are
+crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already
+with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it
+smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation
+throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of
+iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north,
+south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.</p>
+
+<p>Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in
+this country has been a</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+<h4>PUSTULOUS LITERATURE,</h4>
+
+<p>with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic
+wrongs, and infidelities, and massacres, and outrages, until it is a
+wonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on
+the subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and
+New York and all our cities reeking with the filth.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," say some, "we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear
+them out or correct them is by easy divorce." Well, before we yield to
+that cry, let us find out</p>
+
+
+<h4>HOW EASY IT IS NOW.</h4>
+
+<p>I have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while
+in some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy.
+The State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of
+proper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts
+the right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it
+expedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that
+in one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833
+divorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look
+over the records of the States. In Massachusetts 600 divorces in one
+year; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>in one
+year; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New
+England in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England
+20,000. Is that not easy enough?</p>
+
+<p>If the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and
+multiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our
+courts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you
+will have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in
+the middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a
+woman will be that her husband's overcoat was buttonless. Causes of
+divorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England,
+and doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have
+to tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces
+to marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to
+thirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?</p>
+
+<p>I want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with
+the dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one
+case of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the
+reign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know
+how rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the
+Reign of Terror was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce
+in one year in Paris.</p>
+
+
+<h4>WHAT WE WANT</h4>
+
+<p>in this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more
+and more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will
+be persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except
+through the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge
+of that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and
+that it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more
+marriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with
+the idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can
+get out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken
+out of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more
+joking about the blossoms in a bride's hair than about the cypress on
+a coffin.</p>
+
+<p>What we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present
+session move for the changing the national Constitution so that a law
+can be passed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what
+shall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what
+is wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+<h4>HOW IS IT NOW?</h4>
+
+<p>If a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only
+necessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the
+domestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party
+knows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody,
+on April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of
+the household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a
+business excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride's house. No cards.
+There are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the
+disintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States,
+like our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making
+marriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.</p>
+
+<p>The Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session
+for a change of the National Constitution, and then to appoint a
+committee&mdash;not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and
+their families in Washington&mdash;who shall prepare a good, honest,
+righteous, comprehensive,</p>
+
+
+<h4>UNIFORM LAW</h4>
+
+<p>that will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will
+put an end to brokerages in marriage. That will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>send divorce lawyers
+into a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years
+on the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning
+how they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>More difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon
+marriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the
+relation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The
+female to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly
+unattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody
+knows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through
+the commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how
+much estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out
+how long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can
+stand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the
+relation; for he says, "If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce
+law I'll back out." That process is going on all the time, and men
+enter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection,
+and it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that
+transpired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and
+Lackawanna.</p>
+
+<p>Now, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he
+goes into that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>relation there is no possibility of his getting out,
+or no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.
+He should say to himself, "Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a
+whole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of
+sunshine and gardens of peace."</p>
+
+<p>Rigorous divorce law will also hinder women from</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FATAL MISTAKE</h4>
+
+<p>of marrying men to reform them. If a young man by twenty-five years of
+age or thirty years of age has the habit of strong drink fixed on him,
+he is as certainly bound for a drunkard's grave as that a train
+starting out from Grand Central Depot at 8 o'clock to-morrow morning
+is bound for Albany. The train may not reach Albany, for it may be
+thrown from the track. The young man may not reach a drunkard's grave,
+for something may throw him off the iron track of evil habit; but the
+probability is that the train that starts to-morrow morning at 8
+o'clock for Albany will get there and the probability is that the
+young man who has the habit of strong drink fixed on him before
+twenty-five or thirty years of age will arrive at a drunkard's grave.
+She knows he drinks, although he tries to hide it by chewing cloves.
+Everybody knows he drinks. Parents warn, neighbors and friends <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>warn.
+She will marry him, she will reform him.</p>
+
+<p>If she is unsuccessful in the experiment, why then the divorce law
+will emancipate her, because habitual drunkenness is a cause for
+divorce in Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, and nearly all the
+States. So the poor thing goes to the altar of sacrifice. If you will
+show me the poverty-struck streets in any city I will show you the
+homes of the women who married men to reform them. In one case out of
+ten thousand it may be a successful experiment. I never saw the
+successful experiment. But have a rigorous divorce law, and that woman
+will say, "If I am affianced to that man it is for life; and if now in
+the ardor of his young love, and I am the prize to be won, he will not
+give up his cups, when he has won the prize, surely he will not give
+up his cups." And so that woman will say to the man, "No, sir, you are
+already married to the club, and you are married to that evil habit,
+and so you are married twice, and you are a bigamist. Go!"</p>
+
+<p>A rigorous divorce law will also do much to hinder hasty and</p>
+
+
+<h4>INCONSIDERATE MARRIAGES.</h4>
+
+<p>Under the impression that one can be easily released people enter the
+relation without inquiry and without reflection. Romance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>and impulse
+rule the day. Perhaps the only ground for the marriage compact is that
+she likes his looks and he admires the graceful way she passes around
+the ice cream at the picnic! It is all they know about each other. It
+is all the preparation for life. A man not able to pay his own board
+bill, with not a dollar in his possession, will stand at the altar and
+take the loving hand, and say, "With all my worldly goods I thee
+endow!" A woman that could not make a loaf of bread to save her life
+will swear to cherish and obey. A Christian will marry an atheist, and
+that always makes conjoined wretchedness; for if a man does not
+believe there is a God, he is neither to be trusted with a dollar nor
+with your lifelong happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Having read much about love in a cottage people brought up in ease
+will go and starve in a hovel. Runaway matches and elopements, 999 out
+of 1000 of which mean death and hell, multiplying on all hands. You
+see them in every day's newspapers. Our ministers in this region have
+no defence such as they have in other cities where the banns must be
+previously published and an officer of the law must give a certificate
+that all is right; so clergymen are left defenceless, and unite those
+who ought never to be united. Perhaps they are too young or perhaps
+they are standing already in some domestic compact.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>By the wreck of ten thousand homes, by the holocaust of ten thousand
+sacrificed men and women, by the hearthstone of the family which is
+the corner-stone of the State, and in the name of that God who hath
+set up the family institution and who hath made the breaking of the
+marital oath the most appalling of all perjuries, I implore the
+Congress of the United States to make some righteous, uniform law for
+all the States and from ocean to ocean, on this subject of marriage
+and divorce.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ADVICE TO LOVERS.</h4>
+
+<p>Let me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning,
+before you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution;
+inquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the
+taste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take
+the heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put
+your lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation
+for being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who
+dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God
+wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more
+celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that
+Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has
+been or ever will be, is good character.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL</h4>
+
+<p>in this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They
+are the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you
+than any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your
+happiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,</p>
+
+
+<h4>ASK GOD.</h4>
+
+<p>I used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about
+to offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong
+companion, he opened the conversation by saying, "Let us pray." But I
+have seen so many shipwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up
+my mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in
+prayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and
+poverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all
+the path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with
+its wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last
+farewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam
+and Eve, parted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>And let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or
+woman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to
+the Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through
+difference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your
+mind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear,
+remembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who
+have been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and
+immediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green grass on
+quiet graves. And perhaps, my brother, my sister, perhaps you may
+appreciate each other better in heaven than you have appreciated each
+other on earth.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Farm Ballads" our American poet puts into the lips of a
+repentant husband after a life of married perturbation these
+suggestive words:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lying together in silence, perhaps we will agree.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if ever we meet in heaven, I would not think it queer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If we love each other better because we quarrelled here."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And let me say to those of you who are in happy married union,</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+<h4>AVOID FIRST QUARRELS;</h4>
+
+<p>have no unexplained correspondence with former admirers; cultivate no
+suspicions; in a moment of bad temper do not rush out and tell the
+neighbors; do not let any of those gad-abouts of society unload in
+your house their baggage of gab and tittle-tattle; do not stand on
+your rights; learn how to apologize; do not be so proud, or so
+stubborn, or so devilish that you will not make up. Remember that the
+worst domestic misfortunes and most scandalous divorce cases started
+from little infelicities. The whole piled-up train of ten rail cars
+telescoped and smashed at the foot of an embankment one hundred feet
+down came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the
+track. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest
+resounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings
+that were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability,
+and religion, and immortal soul went down in the crash, crash!</p>
+
+<p>And, fellow-citizens as well as fellow-Christians, let us have a
+divine rage against anything that wars on the marriage state. Blessed
+institution! Instead of two arms to fight the battle of life, four.
+Instead of two eyes to scrutinize the path of life, four. Instead of
+two shoulders to lift the burden <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>of life, four. Twice the energy,
+twice the courage, twice the holy ambition, twice the probability of
+worldly success, twice the prospects of heaven. Into that matrimonial
+bower God fetches two souls. Outside the bower room for all
+contentions, and all bickerings, and all controversies, but inside
+that bower there is room for only one guest&mdash;the angel of love. Let
+that angel stand at the floral doorway of this Edenic bower with drawn
+sword to hew down the worst foe of that bower&mdash;easy divorce. And for
+every Paradise lost may there be a Paradise regained. And after we
+quit our home here may we have a brighter home in heaven at the
+windows of which this moment are familiar faces watching for our
+arrival and wondering why so long we tarry.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Dr. Talmage, in common with many critics, here censures
+Mr. James Anthony Froude for making the disclosures. It is, however,
+due to that eminent historian to say that he gives a different
+explanation of his motives than that suggested by Dr. Talmage of a
+regard for "shekels." He states that as Mr. Carlyle had selected him
+as his biographer and given the materials for the work into his hands,
+he conceived that his duty as a conscientious man was to tell the
+whole truth. He did it also as a matter of policy as well as of
+principle. Had he kept back any part, it would have been told with
+less accuracy by others who knew some of the facts but not all of
+them.<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Ed.</span></p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="MATERNITY" id="MATERNITY"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>MATERNITY.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to
+him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to
+offer the yearly sacrifice."&mdash;I <span class="sc">Samuel</span> 2:19.</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>The stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt to discourage a
+woman's soul. She says within herself: "It is impossible that I ever
+can achieve any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean to try;"
+as though a child should refuse to play the eight notes because he
+cannot execute a "William Tell." This Hannah of the text differs from
+the persons I just now named. She was an ordinary woman, with ordinary
+intellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circumstances, and yet,
+by extraordinary piety, standing out before all the ages to come.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE MODEL CHRISTIAN MOTHER.</h4>
+
+<p>Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a person very much like
+herself&mdash;unromantic and plain, never having fought a battle or been
+the subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them would have been
+called a genius. Just what you and I might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>be, that was Elkanah and
+Hannah. The brightest time in all the history of that family was the
+birth of Samuel. Although no star ran along the heavens pointing down
+to his birthplace, I think the angels of God stooped at the coming of
+so wonderful a prophet.</p>
+
+<p>As Samuel had been given in answer to prayer, Elkanah and all his
+family, save Hannah, started up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices of
+thanksgiving. The cradle where the child slept was altar enough for
+Hannah's grateful heart, but when the boy was old enough she took him
+to Shiloh and took three bullocks, and an ephah of flour, and a bottle
+of wine, and made offering of sacrifice unto the Lord, and there,
+according to a previous vow, she left him; for there he was to stay
+all the days of his life, and minister in the tabernacle.</p>
+
+<p>Years rolled on, and every year Hannah made with her own hands a
+garment for Samuel, and took it over to him. The lad would have got
+along well without that garment, for I suppose he was well clad by the
+ministry of the temple; but Hannah could not be contented unless she
+was all the time doing something for her darling boy. "Moreover his
+mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to
+year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly
+sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>I. Hannah stands before you, then, in the first place, as</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN INDUSTRIOUS MOTHER.</h4>
+
+<p>There was no need for her to work. Elkanah, her husband, was far from
+poor. He belonged to a distinguished family; for the Bible tells us
+that he was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the
+son of Zuph. "Who were they?" you say. I do not know; but they were
+distinguished people, no doubt, or their names would not have been
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah might have seated herself with her family, and, with folded
+arms and dishevelled hair, read novels from year to year, if there had
+been any to read; but when I see her making that garment, and taking
+it over to Samuel, I know she is industrious from principle as well as
+from pleasure. God would not have a mother become a drudge or a slave;
+He would have her employ all the helps possible in this day in the
+rearing of her children. But Hannah ought never to be ashamed to be
+found making a coat for Samuel.</p>
+
+<p>Most mothers need no counsel in this direction. The wrinkles on their
+brow, the pallor on their cheek, the thimble-mark on their finger,
+attest that they are faithful in their maternal duties. The bloom, and
+the brightness, and the vivacity of girlhood <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>have given place for the
+grander dignity, and usefulness, and industry of motherhood. But there
+is</p>
+
+
+<h4>A HEATHENISH IDEA</h4>
+
+<p>getting abroad in some of the families of Americans; there are mothers
+who banish themselves from the home circle. For three fourths of their
+maternal duties they prove themselves incompetent. They are ignorant
+of what their children wear, and what their children eat, and what
+their children read. They intrust to irresponsible persons these young
+immortals, and allow them to be under influences which may cripple
+their bodies, or taint their purity, or spoil their manners, or
+destroy their souls.</p>
+
+<p>From the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you know his mother Hannah did
+not make it. Out from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported
+carpets, and down the granite stairs, there has come a great crowd of
+children in this day, untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical
+duties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl of crime and
+sensuality. Indolent and unfaithful mothers will make indolent and
+unfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in any house
+where the daughters see nothing but slatternness and upsidedownativeness
+in their parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly Samuel will
+grow up idle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>Who are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions?
+Who are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the
+walls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets, making the laws,
+governing the nations, making the earth to quake, and heave, and roar,
+and rattle with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are they? For
+the most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old
+homestead, used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own carpets,
+and plait their own door-mats, and flag their own chairs, and do their
+own work. The stalwart men and the</p>
+
+
+<h4>INFLUENTIAL WOMEN</h4>
+
+<p>of this day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came from such an
+illustrious ancestry of hard knuckles and homespun.</p>
+
+<p>And who are these people in society, light as froth, blown every
+whither of temptation and fashion&mdash;the peddlers of filthy stories, the
+dancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the
+tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of low wink, and filthy
+chuckle, and brass breast-pins, and rotten associations? For the most
+part, they came from mothers idle and disgusting&mdash;the scandal-mongers
+of society, going from house to house, attending to everybody's
+business but their own, believing in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>witches, and ghosts, and
+horseshoes to keep the devil out of the churn, and by a godless life
+setting their children on the very verge of hell. The mothers of
+Samuel Johnson, and of Alfred the Great, and Isaac Newton, and of St.
+Augustine, and of Richard Cecil, and of President Edwards, for the
+most part were industrious, hard-working mothers.</p>
+
+<p>Now, while I congratulate all Christian mothers upon the wealth and
+the modern science which may afford them all kinds of help, let me say
+that every mother ought to be observant of her children's walk, her
+children's behavior, her children's food, her children's looks, her
+children's companionships. However much help Hannah may have, I think
+she ought every year, at least, make one garment for Samuel. The Lord
+have mercy on the man who is so unfortunate as to have had a lazy
+mother!</p>
+
+<p>II. Again, Hannah stands before you as</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN INTELLIGENT MOTHER.</h4>
+
+<p>From the way in which she talked in this chapter, and from the way she
+managed this boy, you know she was intelligent. There are no persons
+in the community who need to be so wise and well-informed as mothers.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, this work of culture in children for this world and the next! This
+child is timid, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>and it must be roused up and pushed out into
+activity. This child is forward, and he must be held back and tamed
+down into modesty and politeness. Rewards for one, punishments for
+another. That which will make George will ruin John. The rod is
+necessary in one case, while a frown of displeasure is more than
+enough in another. Whipping and a dark closet do not exhaust all the
+rounds of domestic discipline. There have been children who have grown
+up and gone to glory without ever having had their ears boxed.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how much care and intelligence are necessary in the rearing of
+children! But in this day, when there are so many books on the
+subject, no parent is excusable in being ignorant of the best mode of</p>
+
+
+<h4>BRINGING UP A CHILD.</h4>
+
+<p>If parents knew more of dietetics there would not be so many dyspeptic
+stomachs and weak nerves and inactive livers among children. If
+parents knew more of physiology there would not be so many curved
+spines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as
+there are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in
+sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many
+children coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents
+knew more of Christ, and practised <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>more of His religion, there would
+not be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all
+around us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such
+ecstasy of infernal triumph.</p>
+
+<p>The eaglets in the eyrie have no advantages over the eaglets of a
+thousand years ago; the kids have no superior way of climbing up the
+rocks than the old goats taught hundreds of years ago; the whelps know
+no more now than did the whelps of ages ago&mdash;they are taught no more
+by the lions of the desert; but it is a shame that in this day, when
+there are so many opportunities of improving ourselves in the best
+manner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more
+advancement in this respect than there has been among the kids and the
+eaglets and the whelps.</p>
+
+<p>III. Again, Hannah stands before you as</p>
+
+
+<h4>A CHRISTIAN MOTHER.</h4>
+
+<p>From her prayers and from the way she consecrated her boy to God, I
+know that she was good. A mother may have the finest culture, the most
+brilliant surroundings; but she is not fit for her duties unless she
+be a Christian mother. There may be well-read libraries in the house,
+and exquisite music in the parlor, and the canvases of the best
+artists adorning the walls, and the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful
+apparel, and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>children be wonderful for their attainments, and
+make the house ring with laughter and innocent mirth, but there is
+something woeful-looking in that house if it be not also the residence
+of a Christian mother.</p>
+
+<p>I bless God that there are not many prayerless mothers&mdash;not many of
+them. The weight of the responsibility is so great that they feel the
+need of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a
+divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into
+the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were
+hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been
+for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the
+nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to
+raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a
+Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian?
+Lord, help me!" Are there</p>
+
+
+<h4>ANXIOUS MOTHERS</h4>
+
+<p>who know nothing of the infinite help of religion? Then I commend to
+them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely
+impossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such
+fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime
+gets its victims&mdash;extirpating purity from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>heart, and rubbing out
+the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and
+shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding
+and blasting and burning with shame and woe.</p>
+
+<p>Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that
+child shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal
+harmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of
+joy in heaven; or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and,
+after a life of wrong-doing on earth, it shall go to a home of
+impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being
+decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson and evening prayer and walk
+and ride and look and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory,
+crowding all the battlements, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna,
+brought to God through Christian parentage!</p>
+
+<p>One hundred and twenty clergymen were together, and they were telling
+their experience and their ancestry; and of the one hundred and twenty
+clergymen, how many of them, do you suppose, assigned as the means of
+their conversion the influence of a Christian mother? One hundred out
+of the one hundred and twenty! Philip Doddridge was brought to God by
+the Scripture lesson on the Dutch tiles of a chimney fireplace. The
+mother thinks she is only rocking a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>child, but at the same time she
+may be rocking the fate of nations, rocking the glories of heaven. The
+same maternal power that may lift the child up may press a child down.</p>
+
+<p>A daughter came to</p>
+
+
+<h4>A WORLDLY MOTHER</h4>
+
+<p>and said she was anxious about her sins, and she had been praying all
+night. The mother said: "Oh, stop praying! I don't believe in praying.
+Get over all these religious notions and I'll give you a dress that
+will cost $500, and you may wear it next week to that party." The
+daughter took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle the gayest of
+all the gay, that night; and sure enough all the religious impressions
+were gone and she stopped praying. A few months after she came to die,
+and in her closing moments said: "Mother, I wish you would bring me
+that dress that cost $500." The mother thought it a very strange
+request, but she brought it to please the dying child. "Now," said the
+daughter, "mother, hang that dress on the foot of my bed," and the
+dress was hung there, on the foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got
+up on one elbow and looked at her mother, and then pointed to the
+dress, and said: "Mother, that dress is the price of my soul." Oh,
+what a momentous thing it is to be a mother!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>IV. Again, and lastly, Hannah stands before you</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE REWARDED MOTHER.</h4>
+
+<p>For all the coats she made for Samuel, for all the prayers she offered
+for him, for the discipline exerted over him she got abundant
+compensation in the piety and the usefulness and the popularity of her
+son Samuel; and that is true in all ages. Every mother gets full pay
+for all the prayers and tears in behalf of her children. That man
+useful in commercial life; that man prominent in a profession; that
+master mechanic&mdash;why, every step he takes in life has an echo of
+gladness in the old heart that long ago taught him to be a Christian,
+and heroic and earnest.</p>
+
+<p>The story of what you have done, or what you have written, of the
+influence you exerted, has gone back to the old homestead&mdash;for there
+is some one always ready to carry good tidings&mdash;and that story makes
+the needle in the old mother's tremulous hand fly quicker, and the
+flail in the father's hand come down on the barn floor with a vigorous
+thump. Parents love to hear good news from their children. Do you send
+them good news always?</p>
+
+<p>Look out for the young man who speaks of his father as "the governor,"
+the "squire," or the "old chap." Look out for the young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>woman who
+calls her mother her "maternal ancestor," or the "old woman." "The eye
+that mocketh at his father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it."</p>
+
+<p>God grant that all these parents may have the great satisfaction of
+seeing their children grow up Christians. But, oh! the pang of that
+mother, who, after a life of street gadding and gossip retailing,
+hanging on the children the fripperies and follies of this world, sees
+those children tossed out on the sea of life like foam on the wave, or
+nonentities in a world where only bravery and stalwart character can
+stand the shock! But blessed be the mother who looks upon her children
+as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! the satisfaction of Hannah in seeing Samuel serving at the altar;
+of Mother Eunice in seeing her Timothy learned in the Scriptures. That
+is the mother's recompense, to see children coming up useful in the
+world, reclaiming the lost, healing the sick, pitying the ignorant,
+earnest and useful in every sphere. That throws a new light back on
+the old family Bible whenever she reads it, and that will be ointment
+to soothe the aching limbs of decrepitude, and light up the closing
+hours of life's day with the glories of an autumnal sunset!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>There she sits,</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE OLD CHRISTIAN MOTHER,</h4>
+
+<p>ripe for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the
+celestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn
+has struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the
+wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care
+she used to carry for her children. She sits at home, too old to find
+her way to the house of God; but while she sits there, all the past
+comes back, and the children that forty years ago tripped around her
+armchair with their griefs and joys and sorrows&mdash;those children are
+gone now. Some caught up into a better realm, where they shall never
+die, and others out in the broad world, testing the excellency of a
+Christian mother's discipline. Her last days are full of peace; and
+calmer and sweeter will her spirit become, until the gates of life
+shall lift and let in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide and
+youth, where the limbs never ache, and the eyes never grow dim, and
+the staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm
+of the immortal athlete!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_CHILDRENS_PATRIMONY" id="THE_CHILDRENS_PATRIMONY"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Whose son art thou, thou young man?"<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Samuel 17:58.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Never was there a more unequal fight than that between David and
+Goliath. David five feet high; Goliath ten. David a shepherd boy,
+brought up amid rural scenes; Goliath a warrior by profession. Goliath
+a mountain of braggadocia; David a marvel of humility. Goliath armed
+with an iron spear; David armed with a sling with smooth stones from
+the brook. But you are not to despise these latter weapons. There was
+a regiment of slingers in the Assyrian army and a regiment of slingers
+in the Egyptian army, and they made terrible execution, and they could
+cast a stone with as much precision and force as now can be hurled
+shot or shell. The Greeks in their army had slingers who would throw
+leaden plummets inscribed with the irritating words: "Take this!" So
+it was a mighty weapon David employed in that famous combat.</p>
+
+<p>A Jewish rabbi says that the probability is that Goliath was in such
+contempt for David, that in a paroxysm of laughter he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>threw his head
+back, and his helmet fell off, and David saw the uncovered forehead,
+and his opportunity had come, and taking his sling and swinging it
+around his head two or three times, and aiming at that uncovered
+forehead, he crushed it in like an egg-shell. The battle over,</p>
+
+
+<h4>BEHOLD A TABLEAU:</h4>
+
+<p>King Saul sitting, little David standing, his fingers clutched into
+the hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there
+holding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of
+the complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what
+parentage was honored by such heroism, and in my text he asks David
+his pedigree: "Whose son art thou, thou young man?"</p>
+
+<p>The king saw what you and I see, that this question of heredity is a
+mighty question. The longer I live the more</p>
+
+
+<h4>I BELIEVE IN BLOOD</h4>
+
+<p>&mdash;good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble blood, honest blood,
+thieving blood, heroic blood, cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a
+generation or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a little child
+you sometimes see a similarity to a great-grandfather whose picture
+hangs on the wall. That the physical and mental and moral qualities
+are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>inheritable is patent to any one who keeps his eyes open. The
+similarity is so striking sometimes as to be amusing. Great families,
+regal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down
+through the generations, and what is more perceptible in such families
+may be seen on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand years have
+no power to obliterate the difference.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ROYAL RASCALS.</h4>
+
+<p>The large lip of the House of Austria is seen in all the generations,
+and is called the Hapsburg lip. The House of Stuart always means in
+all generations cruelty and bigotry and sensuality. Witness Queen of
+Scotts. Witness Charles I. and Charles II. Witness James I. and James
+II. and all the other scoundrels of that imperial line.</p>
+
+<p>Scottish blood means persistence, English blood means reverence for
+the ancient, Welsh blood means religiosity, Danish blood means
+fondness for the sea, Indian blood means roaming disposition, Celtic
+blood means fervidity, Roman blood means conquest.</p>
+
+<p>The Jewish facility for accumulation you may trace clear back to
+Abraham, of whom the Bible says "he was rich in silver and gold and
+cattle," and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+<h4>FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS.</h4>
+
+<p>Some families are characterized by longevity, and they have a tenacity
+of life positively Methuselahish. Others are characterized by
+Goliathian stature, and you can see it for one generation, two
+generations, five generations, in all the generations. Vigorous
+theology runs on in the line of the Alexanders. Tragedy runs on in the
+family of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of the
+Trollopes. Philanthropy runs on in the line of the Wilberforces.
+Statesmanship runs on in the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catharine
+of Navarre religious, all their families religious. The celebrated
+family of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the
+Medici&mdash;grandfather, son and Catharine&mdash;all remarkable for keen
+intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.</p>
+
+<p>This law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or
+political condition, for you sometimes find the ignoble in high place
+and the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll
+gatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door-keeper. A descendant of
+the Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest
+families of England are extinct, while some of those most honored in
+the peerage go <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough
+exterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or
+political condition.</p>
+
+<p>Then you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having
+full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William
+is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be
+set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you
+not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the
+generation of the righteous," of "the generation of vipers," of an
+"untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of
+the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
+generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a
+projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son art thou, thou
+young man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," says some one, "that theory discharges me from all
+responsibility. Born of sanctified parents we are bound to be good and
+we cannot help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage we are bound
+to be evil and we cannot help ourselves."</p>
+
+
+<h4>TWO INACCURACIES.</h4>
+
+<p>As much as if you should say, "The centripetal force in nature has a
+tendency to bring everything to the centre, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>therefore all things
+come to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to
+throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will
+go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make
+the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the
+centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide
+of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as
+in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President
+Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the
+scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
+ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of
+this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not
+be courteous to speak in their presence.</p>
+
+
+<h4>YOUR DUTY.</h4>
+
+<p>The practical and useful object of this sermon is to show to you that
+if you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound
+to preserve and develop the glorious inheritance; or if you have come
+of a depraved ancestry, then it is your duty to brace yourself against
+the evil tendency by all prayer and Christian determination, and you
+are to find out what are the family frailties, and in arming the
+castle put the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>strongest guard at the weakest gate. With these smooth
+stones from the brook I hope to strike you, not where David struck
+Goliath, in the head, but where Nathan struck David, in the heart.
+"Whose son art thou, thou young man?"</p>
+
+<p>There is something in the periodical holidays to bring up</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE OLD FOLKS.</h4>
+
+<p>Sometime in the winter holiday, when we are accustomed to gather our
+families together, old times have come back again, and our thoughts
+have been set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." The old folks were so
+busy at such times in making us happy, and perhaps on less resource
+made their sons and daughters happier than you on larger resource are
+able to make your sons and daughters happy. The snow lay two feet
+above their graves, but they shook off the white blankets and mingled
+in the holiday festivities&mdash;the same wrinkles, the same stoop of
+shoulder under the weight of age, the same old style of dress or coat,
+the same smile, the same tones of voice. I hope you remember them
+before they went away. If not, I hope there are those who have recited
+to you what they were, and that there may be in your house some
+article of dress or furniture with which you associate their memories.
+I want to arouse the most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>sacred memories of your heart while I make
+the impassioned interrogatory in regard to your pedigree: "Whose son
+art thou, thou young man?"</p>
+
+<p>I. First, I accost all those who are descended of a</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHRISTIAN ANCESTRY.</h4>
+
+<p>I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people
+now, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps
+there was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised
+you. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved,
+and perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But
+you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.
+From what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the
+family altar and at neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had
+invited God into their heart and life. There was something that
+sustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about
+their destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as
+certainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>That early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when
+you got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the
+fresh air because you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>thought your mother was looking at you. You
+have never been very happy in sin because of a sweet old face that
+would present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you
+until they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who
+spoke. There was an estate not mentioned in the last will and
+testament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian
+entreaty and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to
+hear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold,
+and it was share and share alike. But there was</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN UNWRITTEN WILL</h4>
+
+<p>that read something like this: "In the name of God, Amen. I, being of
+sound mind, bequeath to my children all my prayers for their
+salvation; I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's toil; I
+bequeath to them the Christian religion which has been so much comfort
+to me, and I hope may be solace for them; I bequeath to them a hope of
+reunion when the partings of life are over; share and share alike may
+they have in eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that they may
+avoid my errors and copy anything that may have been worthy. In the
+name of the God who made me, and the Christ who redeemed me, and the
+Holy Ghost who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>sanctifies me, I make this my last will and testament.
+Witness, all ye hosts of heaven. Witness, time, witness, eternity.
+Signed, sealed, and delivered in this our dying hour. Father and
+Mother."</p>
+
+<p>You did not get that will proved at the surrogate's office; but I take
+it out to-day and I read it to you; I take it out of the alcoves of
+your heart; I shake the dust off it, I ask you will you accept that
+inheritance, or will you break the will? O ye of Christian ancestry,
+you have a responsibility vast beyond all measurement! God will not
+let you off with just being as good as ordinary people when you had
+such extraordinary advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a
+hot-house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm?
+Ought not a factory turned by the Housatonic do more work than a
+factory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought not you of
+great early opportunity be better than those who had a cradle
+unblessed?</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE CAPITAL ACCOUNT.</h4>
+
+<p>A father sets his son up in business. He keeps an account of all the
+expenditures. So much for store fixtures, so much for rent, so much
+for this, so much for that, and all the items aggregated, and the
+father <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>expects the son to give an account. Your heavenly Father
+charges against you all the advantages of a pious ancestry&mdash;so many
+prayers, so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties&mdash;all these
+gracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an
+account of it.</p>
+
+<p>Ought not you to be better than those who had no such advantages?
+Better have been a foundling picked up off the city commons than with
+such magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn out
+indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>Ought not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture,
+than that man who can truly say this morning: "The first word I
+remember my father speaking to me was an oath; the first time I
+remember my father taking hold of me was in wrath; I never saw a Bible
+till I was ten years of age, and then I was told it was a pack of
+lies. The first twenty years of my life I was associated with the
+vicious. I seemed to be walled in by sin and death." Now, my brother,
+ought you not&mdash;I leave it as a matter of fairness with you&mdash;ought you
+not to be far better than those who had no early Christian influence?</p>
+
+<p>Standing as you do between the generation that is past and the
+generation that is to come, are you going to pass the blessing on, or
+are you going to have your life the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>gulf in which that tide of
+blessing shall drop out of sight forever? You are</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE TRUSTEE OF PIETY</h4>
+
+<p>in that ancestral line, and are you going to augment or squander that
+solemn trust fund? are you going to disinherit your sons and daughters
+of the heirloom which your parents left you? Ah! that cannot be
+possible, that cannot be possible that you are going to take such a
+position as that. You are very careful about the life insurances, and
+careful about the deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful
+about the title of your property, because when you step off the stage
+you want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision that
+they shall get grandfather and grandmother's religion? Oh, what a last
+will and testament you are making, my brother! "In the name of God,
+Amen. I, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. I
+bequeath to my children all the money I ever made and all the houses I
+own; but I disinherit them, I rob them of the ancestral grace and the
+Christian influence that I inherited. I have squandered that on my own
+worldliness. Share and share alike must they in the misfortune and the
+everlasting outrage. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of
+God and men and angels and devils and all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>generations of earth
+and heaven and hell, March, 1886."</p>
+
+<p>O ye of highly favored ancestry, wake up this morning to a sense of
+your opportunity and your responsibility. I think there must be</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN OLD CRADLE,</h4>
+
+<p>or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of
+midnight supplication in your behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair
+in which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is
+the old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that
+awful night when there were but three of you awake&mdash;you and God and
+mother? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old
+family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: "My son,
+my daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us
+all our lives and to whom we commended you in our prayers living and
+dying? By the memory of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our
+dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our
+spirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf for the new year."
+Oh, the power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a young man of
+New York who attended a prayer-meeting one night and asked for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>prayer, and then went home and wrote down these words:</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN ENTRY IN A DIARY.</h4>
+
+<p>"Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother went to heaven, my
+beautiful, blessed mother, and I have been alone, tossed up and down
+upon the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I ever go to
+heaven? She told me I must meet her in heaven. When she took her boy's
+hand in hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me, and gazed
+earnestly and long into my face, and then lifted them to heaven in
+that last prayer, she prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder
+if I ever shall.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed mother's prayers! Did ever
+boy have such a mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have not
+heard her pray until to-night. I have heard all her prayers over
+again. They have had, in fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she
+was wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so
+importunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a
+Christian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a
+cheerful and happy Christian. There is</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+<h4>"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.</h4>
+
+<p>"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect
+her precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.
+How often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain
+for your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in
+vain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much
+instruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to
+heaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
+trusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never
+doubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
+mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made
+myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a
+Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of
+existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no
+rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all
+away from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish."</p>
+
+<p>Do you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:
+"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and
+goodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>all I am I
+consecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?" Oh, the power of
+ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!</p>
+
+<p>II. But I turn for a moment to those who had</p>
+
+
+<h4>EVIL PARENTAGE,</h4>
+
+<p>and I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven and the
+mightiest triumphs and the brightest crowns will be for those who had
+evil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as
+splendid a gentleman as I know of to-day had for father a man who died
+blaspheming God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their
+ears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful
+Christian ministers of to-day was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide
+of evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and
+yet men have clung to a rock and been rescued.</p>
+
+<p>There is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many
+millions that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate sent
+back a paper of tacks because they were two cents more than he
+expected. Grip and grind and gouge in the fourth generation&mdash;I suppose
+it will be grip and grind and gouge in the twentieth generation. The
+thirst for intoxicants has burned down through the arteries of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other
+families. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes another form of evil.
+But</p>
+
+
+<h4>IT MAY BE RESISTED,</h4>
+
+<p>it has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate
+unselfishness and charity, and teach your children never to eat an
+apple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty
+combativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and
+never answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred
+both ways, and after you have written an angry letter keep it a week
+before you send it, and then burn it up! Is the family frailty
+timidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography of
+brave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you cannot get a little iron
+in your blood. Find out what the family frailty is, and set body, mind
+and soul in battle array.</p>
+
+
+<h4>CONQUER YOUR WILL.</h4>
+
+<p>I think the genealogical table was put in the first chapter of the New
+Testament, not only to show our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a
+man may rise up in an ancestral line and beat back successfully all
+the influences of bad heredity. See in that genealogical table that
+good King Asa came <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>of vile King Abia. See in that genealogical table
+that Joseph and Mary and the most illustrious Being that ever touched
+our world, or ever will touch it, had in their ancestral line
+scandalous Rehoboam and Tamar and Bathsheba. If this world is ever to
+be Edenized&mdash;and it will be&mdash;all the infected families of the earth
+are to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each family
+line and open a new genealogical table. There will be some Joseph in
+the line to reverse the evil influence of Rehoboam, and there will be
+some Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence of Bathsheba.
+Perhaps the star of hope may point down to your manger. Perhaps you
+are to be the hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes and
+stop that long train of genealogical tendencies and switch it off on
+another track from that on which it has been running for a century.
+You do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace as the architects
+of heaven can build, the archway inscribed with the words: "More than
+conqueror."</p>
+
+
+<h4>ADOPTED CHILDREN.</h4>
+
+<p>But whatever your heredity, let me say, you may be sons and daughters
+of the Lord God Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come
+back through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>our
+veins. There are crowns in our escutcheon. Our Father is King. Our
+Brother is King. We may be kings and queens unto God forever. Come and
+sit down on the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in the
+fountains that fall into the basins of crystal and alabaster. Come and
+look out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and
+amaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while you banquet with
+potentates and victors. Oh, when the text sweeps backward, let it not
+stop at the cradle that rocked your infancy, but at the cradle that
+rocked the first world, and when the text sweeps forward, let it not
+stop at your grave, but at the throne on which you may reign forever
+and ever! "Whose son art thou, thou young man?" Son of God! Heir of
+mortality! Take your inheritance!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_MOTHER_OF_ALL" id="THE_MOTHER_OF_ALL"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE MOTHER OF ALL.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
+slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh
+instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from
+man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the
+man."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Genesis 2:21, 22.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>It is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever
+since sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings
+and scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and
+ornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air
+in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions
+walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday
+afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach
+all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this
+paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of</p>
+
+
+<h4>A CORRESPONDING INTELLIGENCE</h4>
+
+<p>just landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I
+speak&mdash;Eve, the first, the fairest and the best.</p>
+
+<p>I make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border
+them with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and
+there are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple
+under the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon,
+and orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There
+are woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred
+spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees
+the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the
+brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp
+and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and
+death as compared with</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE RESIDENCE OF THE WOMAN</h4>
+
+<p>of the text, the subject of my morning story. Never since have such
+skies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has
+river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the
+Havilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddakel, even the pebbles being bdellium
+and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What
+flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost
+to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the
+grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's
+hum, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>waterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness and love and joy.</p>
+
+<p>Right there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FIRST MARRIAGE.</h4>
+
+<p>Adam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and pronounced
+the ceremony when he said: "Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh."</p>
+
+
+<h4>A FORBIDDEN TREE</h4>
+
+<p>stood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day
+alone looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders
+if it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says:
+"I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage
+to the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it
+down to examine it." She examined the fruit. She said: "I do not think
+there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it." She put the
+fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the
+fruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let
+the heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the
+hills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep,
+hell-rending howl:</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+<h4>"THE WORLD IS LOST!"</h4>
+
+<p>Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw, and
+sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds
+troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass.
+Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are
+snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents
+turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted
+myriads of a ruined race.</p>
+
+<p>Do you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated</p>
+
+
+<h4>INQUISITIVENESS?</h4>
+
+<p>She wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six
+thousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity. Healthy
+curiosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science and
+for religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the
+geologist and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of
+nature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the
+antiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried
+Herculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulchre there came up
+shaft and terrace and amphitheatre. Healthful curiosity has enlarged
+the telescopic vision of the astronomer until <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>worlds hidden in the
+distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising
+the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassoed with
+resplendent law.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HEALTHFUL CURIOSITY</h4>
+
+<p>has gone down and found the tracks of the eternal God in the polypi
+and the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah
+encamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the
+spots on the sun, and the larv&aelig; in a beech leaf, and the light under
+fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from
+Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalcul&aelig; that make up the
+phosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and
+spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march
+of God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces
+that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and
+shuttles&mdash;forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the
+mountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and
+booms, with strange mechanism, and ships with nostrils of hot steam
+and yokes of fire draw the continents together.</p>
+
+<p>I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden
+jars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>and
+other magnifying glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the
+natural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God
+for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the
+mechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zo&ouml;logical curiosity of
+Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that
+unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and
+tens of thousands into ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted,
+and that</p>
+
+
+<h4>CURIOSITY BLASTED HER</h4>
+
+<p>and blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by
+unhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole
+of God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all
+human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out
+of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or
+have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into
+ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from
+which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain</p>
+
+
+<h4>TREES OF MYSTERY</h4>
+
+<p>how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity,
+resurrection&mdash;in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>the discussion of these subjects hundreds and
+thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually
+been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not
+understand who Melchisedec was not!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It
+is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the
+eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a
+falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About
+other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other
+people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are
+over anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they
+fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of
+tittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house
+Colonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever
+hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable
+secret, let him come and sacrifice it to</p>
+
+
+<h4>THIS GODDESS OF SPLUTTER.</h4>
+
+<p>Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not
+belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this
+computation of moral algebra: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>good sense plus good breeding, minus
+curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!</p>
+
+<p>Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm
+of</p>
+
+
+<h4>FRENCH NOVELS,</h4>
+
+<p>to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced
+them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They
+want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance
+while they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching
+themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering
+with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage
+healthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated
+curiosity.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TREACHEROUS FRUIT.</h4>
+
+<p>The subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits
+that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony.
+Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also
+to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand
+years of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that
+luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great
+wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but
+there is death at the bottom. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>Intoxication has great exhilaration for
+a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars
+where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich,
+and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the
+dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or
+is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands
+on the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is
+ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that
+crackle with all-consuming torture? "Rejoice, O young man, in thy
+youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know
+thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>SWEET AT THE START,</h4>
+
+<p>horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly
+mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the
+last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own
+image.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! aha!" says the roystering inebriate; "this is joy for you; fill
+high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's
+rags and my God's defiance." And he knows not that a fiend stirs the
+goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust
+their forked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>tongues hissing through the froth on the rim.</p>
+
+
+<h4>PERDITION BOUGHT FOR A SIXPENCE.</h4>
+
+<p>The Philistines jeered and laughed and shouted at Samson. Oh, they
+wanted him to make sport for them, and he made sport for them! How
+bright and gay was the scene for a little while! After awhile the
+giant puts one hand against this pillar, and the other hand against
+this pillar, and bows himself, and three thousand merry-makers are
+mashed like grapes in a wine-press. Sin rapturous at the start, awful
+at the last.</p>
+
+<p>That one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a
+blow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a
+butcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you
+would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and
+display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the
+disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the
+wretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open
+all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic
+transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world
+and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues
+upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>like a
+leech famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at
+the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!</p>
+
+<p>And there are those who are</p>
+
+
+<h4>VOTARIES OF PLEASURE.</h4>
+
+<p>Let me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and
+your summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are
+loud voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with
+terror. You are past the "Narrows," and almost outside the "Hook," and
+if the Atlantic take thee, frail mortal, thou shalt never get to shore
+again. Put back, row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore
+casteth a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Oh, are there not some
+of you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a
+vessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? Thou nearest the
+breakers, one heave upon the rock. Oh, what an awful crash was that!
+Another lunge may crush thee beneath the spars or grind thy bones to
+powder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard!
+Trust not that loose plank nor attempt the move, but quickly clasp the
+feet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until He hear
+thee, "Lord, save me, or I perish." Sin beautiful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>at the start&mdash;oh,
+how sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads
+you is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The
+promise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen
+sword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous handwritings on
+the wall.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HIDEOUS ATTRACTIVENESS.</h4>
+
+<p>Observe also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to
+great attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such
+perfection of womanhood. You could not suggest an attractiveness to
+the body or suggest any refinement to the manner. You could add no
+gracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the
+voice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman to be the companion of a
+perfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in
+accord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against
+God's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the
+fruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults,
+that have set the universe a-wailing,</p>
+
+
+<h4>A TERRIBLE OFFSET</h4>
+
+<p>to all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and
+women naturally vulgar going into transgression. We <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>expect that
+people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but
+how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to
+the refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of
+Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more
+appalling. The genius of Catharine II., of Russia, only sets forth in
+more powerful contrast her unappeasable ambition. The translations
+from the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful
+qualifications for a queen, made the more disgusting her
+capriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness
+of Byron's mind made the more alarming Byron's sensuality.</p>
+
+<p>Let no one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or
+exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise
+apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness,
+for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward
+can give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for vice
+hell deep.</p>
+
+<p>My subject also impresses me with the regal</p>
+
+
+<h4>INFLUENCE OF WOMAN.</h4>
+
+<p>When I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the
+generations that have followed, it suggests to me the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>great power all
+women have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you,
+with the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and
+the stage. They mean nothing, they are accepted as nothing. Woman's
+nobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence, and when I
+see this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole
+human race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a
+blow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons,
+or up among the thrones.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I am not speaking of representative women&mdash;of Eve, who
+ruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike
+through the head of Sisera the warrior; of Esther, who overcame
+royalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess;
+of Mary, who nursed the world's Saviour; of Grandmother Lois,
+immortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove
+the dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie
+Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a
+mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I
+speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who,
+unambitious for political power, as</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+<h4>WIVES AND MOTHERS</h4>
+
+<p>and sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of
+home.</p>
+
+<p>When at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny
+of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence
+came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and
+sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for
+heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city;
+and the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the
+brother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the
+aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and
+mother down the steep of years. Need I go into history to find you
+illustrations? Ah no; in your own memory there was at least one such!
+When I come to speak of womanly influence, my mind always wanders off
+to</p>
+
+
+<h4>ONE MODEL,</h4>
+
+<p>the aged one who, twenty years ago, we put away for the resurrection.
+About eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father
+and mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New
+Jersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long
+life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her
+end in peace. No child of want <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>ever came to her door and was turned
+empty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one
+asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When
+the angel of life came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to
+rejoice at the incarnation. When the angel of death came to a
+neighbor's dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial.</p>
+
+<p>We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of
+my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor,
+but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of thy comforting
+grace?" Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had
+but one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent
+missionary son; and when the ship from China anchored in New York
+harbor, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his
+paternal home, she said: "Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant depart
+in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The prayer was soon
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>It was an autumnal day very much like this when we gathered from afar
+and found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She
+looked very natural, the hands very much as when they were employed in
+kindness for her children. Whatever else we forget, we never forget
+the look of mother's hands. As we stood there by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>the casket, we could
+not help but say: "Don't she look beautiful?" It was a cloudless day
+when, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting-place.
+The withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and
+the sun shone on the Raritan River until it looked like fire; but more
+calm and beautiful and radiant was the setting sun of that aged
+pilgrim's life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more
+death. Dear mother! Beautiful mother!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the pure spirit rests with God."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I need not go back and show you Zenobia or Semiramis or Isabella as
+wonders of womanly excellence or greatness, when I in this moment
+point to your own picture gallery of memory, and show you the one face
+that you remember so well, and arouse all your holy reminiscences, and
+start you in new consecration to God by the pronunciation of that
+tender, beautiful, glorious word, "Mother! mother!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="SISTERLY_INFLUENCE" id="SISTERLY_INFLUENCE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>SISTERLY INFLUENCE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to
+him."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Exodus 2:4.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the
+lattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious
+boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have
+been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby
+boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America
+carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves
+of papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of
+that material, as we learn from Pliny, and Herodotus, and
+Theophrastus.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MIRIAM'S VIGIL.</h4>
+
+<p>"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born," had been Pharaoh's order. To
+save her son, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, had put him in
+that queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood on the bank
+watching that craft with its precious burden. She was far enough off
+not to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer
+protection. There she stands on the bank, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>Miriam the poetess, Miriam
+the quick-witted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after
+time she became so mad with that very brother for marrying a woman she
+did not like, that she made a great family row, and was struck with
+leprosy.</p>
+
+<p>Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults like all the rest of
+us. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A
+strong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a
+sudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water-fowl, might
+swoop, and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or
+hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might craunch the babe.
+Miriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each
+side of her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the
+sun, came down and entered her bathing-house. When from the lattice
+she saw that boat she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were
+pulled back from the face of the child and the boy looked up he cried
+aloud, for he was hungry and frightened, and would not even let the
+princess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than
+acknowledge any one of the court as mother.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN ADROIT MAIDEN.</h4>
+
+<p>Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to
+the child, leaps <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>from the bank and rushes down and offers to get a
+nurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings Jochebed, the
+baby's mother, incognito, not sure of the court knowing that she was
+the mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for
+its fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire
+Jochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my
+hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful, brilliant,
+and strategic sister!</p>
+
+<p>"Go home," someone might have said to Miriam. "Why risk yourself out
+there alone on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in
+danger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian; go home!" No;
+Miriam, the sister, most lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses,
+the brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty
+centuries of the world's history have never had so much involved in
+the arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus
+boat calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to be a non-such in
+history. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer,
+conqueror, deliverer.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HEBREW LEGENDS.</h4>
+
+<p>He had such remarkable beauty in childhood that Josephus says, when he
+was carried <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>along the road, people stopped to gaze at him, and
+workmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully
+put his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his
+foot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child
+might yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the
+Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before the child,
+one containing rubies, and the other burning coals. And if he took the
+coals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he was to die. For
+some reason the child took one of the coals, and put it in his mouth,
+so that his life was spared, although it burned the tongue till he was
+indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread
+open the palms of his hands in prayer and the Red Sea parted to let
+two million five hundred thousand people escape. And he put the palms
+of his hands together in prayer and the Red Sea closed on a
+strangulated host.</p>
+
+
+<h4>UNIQUE BURIAL.</h4>
+
+<p>His life was unutterably grand, his burial must be on the same scale.
+God would let neither man nor saint nor archangel have anything to do
+with weaving for him a shroud or digging for him a grave. The
+omnipotent God left His throne in heaven one day, and if the question
+was asked, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>"Whither is the King of the Universe going?" the answer
+was, "I am going down to bury Moses." And the Lord took this mightiest
+of men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear, and Moses ran his
+eye over the magnificent range of country. Here, the valley of
+Esdraelon, where the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and
+yonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon, and Gerizim, and hills of
+Judea; and the village of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho
+yonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost took the old
+lawgiver's breath away as he looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>And then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye
+of Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the
+great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased;
+and his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: "To the skies,
+thou immortal spirit!" And then one divine hand was put against the
+back of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God
+laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in
+the Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed
+in crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into
+an everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only
+obsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>undertaker,
+and grave-digger, and mourner were ended.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE WORLD INDEBTED.</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an
+important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of
+river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one
+passenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming
+eternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from
+the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought
+that wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to
+be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from
+the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the
+God-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house,
+would have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of
+her own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there
+been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for
+faithful sisterhood!</p>
+
+<p>For how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a
+deliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted
+to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the
+farm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>homes! Come up from the
+banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the
+Mobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and
+let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in
+law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics
+and religion!</p>
+
+<p>If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants,
+and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and
+trades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and
+perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would
+rise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how
+much of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have
+gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother
+sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the
+banks of self-denial.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.</h4>
+
+<p>Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers,
+are younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the
+brother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off
+from her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back
+water-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister
+decides <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>the direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By
+gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it
+toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a
+brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even
+religion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
+peace.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HER TOILSOME LIFE.</h4>
+
+<p>The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the
+family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of
+her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my
+sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and
+getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time
+she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her
+attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity,
+and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an
+ungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.</p>
+
+<p>In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of
+births are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out
+with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last
+because she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that
+sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters
+who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of
+the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon
+them will have to turn out to let them, pass.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HELP TO MAKE MEN.</h4>
+
+<p>Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It
+is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother
+can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses.
+There is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I
+tell you what your brother will be&mdash;either a blessing or a curse to
+society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like
+Moses, have the choice between rubies and living coals, and your
+influence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like
+Moses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and
+mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of
+homes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well
+invested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger
+brothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the
+day the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will
+come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>censorious,
+unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own
+irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his
+infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few
+years of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected
+back upon you some day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis
+where he would have failed but for you.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TEASING A FAMILY CURSE.</h4>
+
+<p>Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability. Don't talk
+discouragingly about his future. Don't let Miriam get down off the
+bank of the Nile, and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don't
+tease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease.
+That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most
+devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another
+form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and
+makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less
+blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your
+sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your
+brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the
+body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and
+lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of
+innumerable households that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>brothers tease the sisters, and the
+sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the
+shape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by
+revealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an
+"Ahem!" Tease! Tease! Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says: "He
+that hateth his brother is a murderer." Now, when you, by teasing,
+make your brother or sister hate you, you turn him or her into a
+murderer or murderess.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BEWARE OF JEALOUSY.</h4>
+
+<p>Don't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as it so often does,
+because her brother gets more honor or more means. Even Miriam, the
+heroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She
+had possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and
+not only so but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so
+disgusted and outraged at Moses, first because he had married at all,
+and next, because he had practised miscegenation, that she is drawn
+into a frenzy, and then begins to turn white, and gets white as a
+corpse, and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk;
+the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom
+she had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that
+brings her restoration.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>Let there be no room in all your house for jealousy, either to sit or
+stand. It is a leprous abomination. Your brother's success, O sisters!
+is your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while
+Moses the brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Red
+Sea, Miriam, the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted
+and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the
+cymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was
+smothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian helmet went under.</p>
+
+
+<h4>FAMILY QUARRELS.</h4>
+
+<p>How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand
+together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling
+about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with
+their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery
+that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each
+other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age
+of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the
+same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave
+in the cemetery.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE ROTHSCHILDS.</h4>
+
+<p>If you only knew it, your interests are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>identical. Of all the
+families of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most
+conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm
+Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about
+him, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise
+that they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction,
+they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the
+raising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen.
+That illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes,
+a united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude
+of dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary
+impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling!
+Sister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will
+lovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous
+disaster strike.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FAMILY BOND.</h4>
+
+<p>When father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have
+not already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the
+only ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for
+your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same
+cradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>for by the
+same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of
+all the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who
+started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and
+prosperity&mdash;I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the
+sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother
+will see that the sister never wants an escort.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and
+damning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would
+hardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would
+make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest
+prayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of
+sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of
+the world, and the brother flee off in another direction in
+dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at
+the iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a
+consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living
+together for years, very often do not know each other, and that they
+see only the imperfections and none of the virtues!</p>
+
+
+<h4>A RUSSIAN BANQUET.</h4>
+
+<p>General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>had in early life wandered off
+in the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a
+fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a
+banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited
+a plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted,
+came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife
+were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general
+asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had
+two brothers and a sister. "No other brothers?" "My younger brother
+went off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago
+killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger
+brother whom he thought was dead." And how loud was the cheer, and how
+warm was the embrace!</p>
+
+<p>Brother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other
+as they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is
+grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud
+and unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some
+woman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man.
+That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in
+June. Come, let me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam." "Miriam,
+this is Moses." Add <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>seventy-five per cent to your present
+appreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not
+stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you
+hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have
+all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.</p>
+
+
+<h4>BE AGREEABLE.</h4>
+
+<p>Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible,
+remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood
+will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into
+the battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on
+paths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through
+shadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the
+journey be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's
+knee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and
+girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell
+of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as
+much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse
+to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall
+welcome us home, as we say: "Father and mother, we have come, and
+brought our children with us." The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>old revival hymn described it with
+glorious repetition:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Brothers and sisters there will meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brothers and sisters there will meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brothers and sisters there will meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will meet to part no more."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's
+house on a stormy night by some fascinating stories that were being
+told him, and then looked out and saw it was so dark he did not dare
+go home. The incident impressed me the more because in my childhood I
+had much, the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with
+him, but they dared not. It got later and later&mdash;seven o'clock, eight
+o'clock, nine o'clock. "Oh," he said, "I wish I were home!" As he
+opened the door the last time a blinding flash of the storm and a
+deafening roar overcame him. But after a while he saw in the distance
+a lantern, and lo! his brother was coming to fetch him home, and the
+lad stepped out and with swift feet hastened on to his brother who
+took him home, where they were so glad to greet him, and for a long
+time supper had been waiting. So may it be when the night of death
+comes and our earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare not go
+alone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother, our Friend closer than a
+brother, come out to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>meet us with the light of the promises, which
+shall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go in to join our
+loved ones waiting for us, supper all ready, the marriage supper of
+the Lamb!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="TRIALS_OF_HOUSEKEEPING" id="TRIALS_OF_HOUSEKEEPING"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
+alone? bid her therefore that she help me."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Luke
+10:40.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead
+and his widow is taking charge of the premises. This is the widow
+Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household.
+This is Mary, the youngest sister, with a book under her arm, and her
+face having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation. Company has
+come. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good
+deal of excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture is
+hastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are
+adjusted as well as, in so short a time, Mary and Martha can attend to
+these matters.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE WELCOME TO CHRIST.</h4>
+
+<p>They did not keep Christ standing at the door until they were newly
+appareled, or until they had elaborately arranged their tresses, then
+coming out with their affected surprise as though they had not heard
+the two or three previous knockings, saying: "Why, is that you?" No.
+They were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>ladies, and were always presentable, although they may not
+have always had on their best, for none of us always have on our best;
+if we did our best would not be worth having on. They throw open the
+door and greet Christ. They say: "Good morning, Master; come in and be
+seated."</p>
+
+<p>Christ did not come alone; He had a group of friends with Him, and
+such an influx of city visitors would throw any country home into
+perturbation. I suppose also the walk from the city had been a good
+appetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important
+department, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner greeted the guests
+than she fled to that room. Mary had no anxiety about household
+affairs. She had full confidence that Martha could get up the best
+dinner in Bethany. She seems to say: "Now, let us have a division of
+labor. Martha, you cook and I'll sit down and be good."</p>
+
+
+<h4>DIFFERENCE IN SISTERS.</h4>
+
+<p>So you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. There
+is Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive
+of some new pastry, or discovering something in the art of cooking and
+housekeeping. There is Mary, also, fond of conversation, literary, so
+engaged in deep questions of ethics she has no time to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>attend to the
+questions of household welfare. It is noon. Mary is in the parlor with
+Christ. Martha is in the kitchen. It would have been better if they
+had divided the work, and then they could have divided the opportunity
+of listening to Jesus; but Mary monopolizes Christ, while Martha
+swelters at the fire.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TROUBLE IN THE KITCHEN.</h4>
+
+<p>It was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that
+day. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious
+entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a
+repast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen.
+Perhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or
+Martha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only
+to have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting
+the proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with
+pitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the
+kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: "Lord, dost Thou not care
+that my sister hath left me to serve alone?"</p>
+
+<p>Christ scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have
+his scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He
+knew Martha had almost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>worked herself to death to get Him something
+to eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as
+He seems to say: "My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit
+down on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha,
+thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is
+needful." As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a
+great many household perplexities and anxieties.</p>
+
+
+<h4>NON-APPRECIATION.</h4>
+
+<p>First, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made
+Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her
+older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of
+the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange,
+they say when they get home: "Oh, you ought to be in our factory a
+little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty
+subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!"
+Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a
+university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a
+library, while she is health officer, police and president of her
+realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to
+keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed
+to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit
+in an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and
+throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and
+great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household.
+Those are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great mass
+of housekeepers&mdash;the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at
+thirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look
+as though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were
+sixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and
+Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great
+Armageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see
+that the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those
+tombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: "Here
+lies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and
+scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a
+broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle."</p>
+
+
+<h4>A WEARING LIFE.</h4>
+
+<p>You think, O man of the world! that you have all the cares and
+anxieties. If the cares and anxieties of the household should come
+upon you for one week you would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale&mdash;I
+mean <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper arises in the
+morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable
+hour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not
+come; what if the clock has stopped&mdash;no matter, she must have the
+morning repast at an irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got
+off to school. What if their garments are torn; what if they do not
+know their lessons; what if they have lost a hat or sash&mdash;they must be
+ready. Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps of several
+days, to plan; but what if the butcher has sent meat unmasticable, or
+the grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, and what if some
+piece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or the
+roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things
+occur&mdash;you must be ready.</p>
+
+<p>Spring weather comes, and there must be a revolution in the family
+wardrobe, or autumn comes, and you must shut out the northern blast;
+but what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during
+the year, the children have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if
+the fashions have changed. Your house must be an apothecary's shop; it
+must be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of
+ailments&mdash;something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn,
+something to poultice <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>the inflammation, something to silence the
+jumping tooth, something to soothe the ear-ache. You must be in half a
+dozen places at the same time, or you must attempt to be.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ASSURED SYMPATHY.</h4>
+
+<p>If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient
+rush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient. Oh,
+woman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of
+others in regard to your household toils let me assure you, from the
+kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all
+your work from garret to cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and
+Hannah, and Abigail and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and
+Hannah More is the God of the housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus was never married that he might be the especial friend and
+confidante of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I blunder; Christ
+was married. The Bible says that the Church is the Lamb's wife, and
+that makes me know that all Christian women have a right to go to
+Christ and tell Him of their annoyances and troubles, since by His
+oath of conjugal fidelity He is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert,
+the Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this subject:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The servant by this clause<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Makes drudgery divine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Makes this and the action fine."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again, there is the trial of</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+<h4>SEVERE ECONOMY.</h4>
+
+<p>Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are
+subjected to it&mdash;some under more and some under less stress of
+circumstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and
+take very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in
+demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of
+women&mdash;attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the
+bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the
+president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a
+panic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices,
+this perpetual study of economics, this life-long attempt to keep the
+outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A PREPARATION.</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, my sister, this is a part of the divine discipline! If it were
+best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front
+windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked
+fifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of
+Zarephath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as
+long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness&mdash;forty years.
+Beside that, this is going to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>make heaven the more attractive in the
+contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none
+of the nuisances of catering for appetites. And in the land of the
+white robe they never have to mend anything, and the air in that hill
+country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man
+owns his own house, and a mansion at that.</p>
+
+<p>It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven
+if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be
+so great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of
+life if in this world you had a country-seat; but if you have walked
+with tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount
+celestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom,
+oh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do
+except what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen
+centuries! I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all
+the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes and the Hugh Latimers, and
+the Theban Legion. Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be
+kept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a change from here to
+there&mdash;from the time when they put down the rolling-pin to when they
+take up the sceptre! If Chatsworth Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on
+Fifth Avenue were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>to be lifted into the celestial city they would be
+considered uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus would be
+ashamed to be seen going in and out of either of them.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE TRIAL OF SICKNESS.</h4>
+
+<p>There are many housekeepers who could get along with their toils if it
+were not for sickness and trouble. The fact is, one-half of the women
+of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass, who has
+never had an ache or pain, may consider household toil inconsiderable,
+and toward evening she may skip away miles to the fields and drive
+home the cattle, and she may until ten o'clock at night fill the house
+with laughing racket; but oh, to do the work of life with wornout
+constitution, when whooping cough has been raging for six weeks in the
+household, making the night as sleepless as the day&mdash;that is not so
+easy.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this comes after the nerves have been shattered by some
+bereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house, and
+set the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into
+a slumber which needs no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for
+the whole group a great deal better than she can for a part of the
+group now the rest are gone! Though you may tell her God is taking
+care of those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>both flocks;
+and one wing she puts over the flock in the house, the other wing she
+puts over the flock in the grave.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that
+will take a woman through the trials of home life. At first there may
+be a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage
+hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more
+than atoned by the joy of being together, and by the fact that when it
+is late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is
+time to go! The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of
+anxiety and apprehension, are a matter of merriment&mdash;the loaf of bread
+turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced
+or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the
+cutlery and the mantel ornaments of a new home.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE PROSE OF MATRIMONY.</h4>
+
+<p>But after a while the romance is all gone, and then there is something
+to be prepared for the table that the book called "Cookery Taught in
+Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a
+handful of this, a cup of that and a spoonful of something else. It is
+not something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavored with
+ordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>ovens. It is the loaf of
+domestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and
+the fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with
+the new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home
+trial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had a wretched
+home. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and
+he says, writing out of his own experience: "Better is a dinner of
+herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."</p>
+
+
+<h4>GLORIOUS SELF-SACRIFICE.</h4>
+
+<p>How great are the responsibilities of housekeepers! Sometimes an
+indigestible article of food, by its effect upon a commander or king,
+has defeated an army or over-thrown an empire. Housekeepers by the
+food they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they
+introduce, by the influences they bring around the home, are deciding
+the physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race.</p>
+
+<p>You say your life is one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters,
+that is the only life worth living. That was Florence Nightingale's
+life; that was Payson's life; that was Christ's life. We admire it in
+others, but how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves. When in
+this city young Dr. Hutchison, having spent a whole night in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>a
+diphtheritic room for the relief of a patient, became saturated with
+the poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to put garlands
+on his grave; everybody appreciates that. When in the burning hotel at
+St. Louis a young man on the fifth story broke open the door of the
+room where his mother was sleeping, and plunged in amid smoke and
+fire, crying: "Mother! where are you?" and never came out, our hearts
+applauded that young man. But how few of us have the Christ-like
+spirit&mdash;a willingness to suffer for others!</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BARBAROUS PEDAGOGUE.</h4>
+
+<p>A rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half-starved lad, who
+had offended against the laws of the school, and said: "Take off your
+coat directly, sir." The boy refused to take it off, whereupon the
+teacher said again: "Take off your coat, sir," as he swung the whip
+through the air. The boy refused. It was not because he was afraid of
+the lash&mdash;he was used to that at home&mdash;but it was from shame; he had
+no undergarment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his
+coat there went a sob through the school. They saw then why he did not
+want to remove his coat, and they saw the shoulder-blades had almost
+cut through the skin, and a stout, healthy boy rose up and went to the
+teacher of the school <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>and said: "Oh, sir, please don't hurt this poor
+fellow; whip me; see, he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt
+him, he's poor; whip me." "Well," said the teacher, "it's going to be
+a severe whipping; I am willing to take you as a substitute." "Well,"
+said the boy, "I don't care; you whip me, if you will let this poor
+fellow go." The stout, healthy boy took the scourging without an
+outcry.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> "Bravo," says every man&mdash;"Bravo!" How many of us are
+willing to take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and
+the anxiety for other people! Beautiful thing to admire, but how
+little we have of that spirit! God give us that self-denying spirit,
+so that whether we are in humble spheres or in conspicuous spheres we
+may perform our whole duty&mdash;for this struggle will soon be over.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A CHRISTIAN HOUSEKEEPER.</h4>
+
+<p>One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance
+of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we
+would come in from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I
+remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the
+line of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>gray hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table
+and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the fact
+is, I'm too tired to eat." Long after she might have delegated this
+duty to others she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the
+matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for
+somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in
+an express train, I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the
+window and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so
+one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped
+me on the shoulder and said: "De Witt, I see you are looking out at
+the scenes of your boyhood." "Oh, yes," I replied, "I was looking out
+at the old place where my mother lived and died."</p>
+
+<p>That night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was
+the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children
+on either side of the table, most of them gone never to come back. At
+one end of the table my father, with a smile that never left his
+countenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six
+years' smile&mdash;not the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage
+and of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful,
+benignant, hard-working, aged Christian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>housekeeper, my mother. She
+was very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. "Blessed
+are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and
+their works do follow them."</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It may be hoped that the savage who administered it
+received the attention of the Board of Education. A man so grossly
+unjust should be in the Penitentiary.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="WOMAN_ENTHRONED" id="WOMAN_ENTHRONED"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>WOMAN ENTHRONED.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"There are threescore queens."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Solomon's Song 6:8.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>So Solomon, by one stroke, sets forth the imperial character of a true
+Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a
+subordinate, but a queen; and in my text Solomon sees sixty of these
+helping to make up the royal pageant of Jesus. Crown and courtly
+attendants and imperial wardrobe are not necessary to make a queen,
+but graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman.
+Woman's position is higher in the world than man's, and although she
+has often been denied the right of suffrage, she always does vote, and
+always will vote, by her influence, and her chief desire ought to be
+that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she
+has already won. My chief anxiety is not that woman have other rights
+accorded her, but that she by the grace of God rise up to the
+appreciation of the glorious rights she already possesses. I shall
+enumerate some of those rights this morning.</p>
+
+<p>I. In the first place, woman has the special and superlative right of
+blessing and</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+<h4>COMFORTING THE SICK.</h4>
+
+<p>What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of
+disease? Tens of thousands of sick-beds! What shall we do with them?
+Shall man, with his rough hand and heavy foot and impatient bearing,
+minister? No. He cannot soothe the pain. He cannot quiet the nerves.
+He knows not where to set the light. His hand is not steady enough to
+pour out the drops. He is not wakeful enough to be watcher. The Lord
+God, who sent Miss Dix into the Virginia hospitals, and Florence
+Nightingale into the Crimea, and the Maid of Saragossa to appease the
+wounds of the battlefield, has equipped wife, mother, and daughter for
+this delicate but tremendous mission.</p>
+
+<p>You have known men who despised woman, but the moment disease fell
+upon them, they did not send for their friends at the bank, or their
+partner in business, or their worldly associates. Their first cry was,
+"Take me to my wife." The dissipated young man at the college scoffs
+at the idea of being under home influences, but at the first blast of
+the typhoid fever on his cheek he says,</p>
+
+
+<h4>"WHERE IS MOTHER?"</h4>
+
+<p>I think one of the most pathetic passages in all the Bible is the
+description of the lad <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>who went out to the harvest-field of Shunem
+and got sun-struck, throwing his hands on his temples and crying out,
+"Oh, my head! my head!" and they said: "Carry him to his mother." And
+then the record is: "He sat on her knees till noon, and then died." It
+is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel, once in
+a while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their
+mouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn
+you in the bed! How loudly they talk! How you long for the ministries
+of home!</p>
+
+<p>I knew one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes for
+several weeks' business absence at the West. A telegram came at
+midnight that he was on his death-bed, far away from home. By express
+train the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late. He
+feared not to die; but he was in an agony to live until his family got
+there. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while
+longer. He said: "I am willing to die, but not alone." But the pulses
+fluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped. The express trains
+met in the midnight&mdash;wife and daughters going westward, lifeless
+remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad,
+pitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick we want to be sick
+at home. When the time comes for us to die,</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+<h4>WE WANT TO DIE AT HOME.</h4>
+
+<p>The room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be
+very plain; but who cares for that? Loving hands to bathe the temples;
+loving voices to speak good cheer; loving lips to read the comforting
+promises of Jesus. In the war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the
+musketry; men cried to the hosts, "Forward, march!" men hurled their
+battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, "Charge! charge!"
+but woman scraped the lint; woman administered the cordials; woman
+watched by the dying couch; woman wrote the last message to the home
+circle; woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and
+four men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bands
+and triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be
+written anywhere, save in</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE CHRONICLES OF HEAVEN,</h4>
+
+<p>of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the
+Chickahominy; of Annie Ross in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret
+Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds
+undressed, some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them
+over, those who had an arm left waved it, and filled the air with
+their "hurrah!"&mdash;of Mrs. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>Hodge, who came from Chicago with blankets
+and with pillows, until the men shouted: "Three cheers for the
+Christian-Commission! God bless the women at home!" then sitting down
+to take the last message: "Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to
+meet me in heaven; tell her to train up the boys whom we have loved so
+well; tell her we shall meet again in the good land; tell her to bear
+my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier"&mdash;and of Mrs.
+Shelton, into whose face the convalescent soldier looked and said:
+"Your grapes and cologne cured me."</p>
+
+<p>Men did their work with shot, and shell, and carbine, and howitzer;</p>
+
+
+<h4>WOMEN DID THEIR WORK</h4>
+
+<p>with socks, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and Scripture
+texts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that
+land where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded
+and said: "On which side did you fight?" Women knelt down over the
+wounded and said: "Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for
+you to eat? What makes you cry?" To-night, while we men are sound
+asleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will
+be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>distress in
+that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.</p>
+
+<p>II. Again, woman has a superlative right to take</p>
+
+
+<h4>CARE OF THE POOR.</h4>
+
+<p>There are hundreds and thousands of them in all our cities. There is a
+kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of
+little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need
+to be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks
+would know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a
+dress? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little
+girl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new
+pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it
+falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so
+heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather
+it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and
+finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the
+donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps
+as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust
+out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to
+have come down.</p>
+
+<p>O Christian young woman, if you would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>make yourself happy and win the
+blessing of Christ, go out</p>
+
+
+<h4>AMONG THE DESTITUTE!</h4>
+
+<p>A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry;
+but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty
+will give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, "Look after that
+woman; canopy her with your wings and shelter her from all harm;" and
+while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the
+little ones around the room will whisper, "Who is she? Ain't she
+beautiful?" and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear
+dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten
+stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the
+highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men."</p>
+
+<p>Can you tell me why a Christian woman, going-down among</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE HAUNTS OF INIQUITY</h4>
+
+<p>on a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity? I stood in the
+chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,
+in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh; and I said to
+her, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place,
+"Do you come here nights to hold a service?" "Oh yes," she said, "I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>take my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest
+and the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel;
+and then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them." I
+said, "Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while
+performing this Christian errand?" "Never," she said, "never."</p>
+
+<p>That young woman who has her father by her side walking down the
+street, and an armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as
+that Christian woman who goes forth on gospel work into the haunts of
+iniquity, carrying Bibles and bread. Some one said, "I dislike very
+much to see that Christian woman teaching those bad boys</p>
+
+
+<h4>IN THE MISSION SCHOOL;</h4>
+
+<p>I am afraid to have her instruct them." "So," said another man, "I am
+afraid too." Said the first: "I am afraid they will use vile language
+before they leave the place." "Ah!" said the other man, "I am not
+afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that if any of those boys
+should use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him
+to pieces and kill him on the spot."</p>
+
+
+<h4>SOLICITATION OF CHARITIES.</h4>
+
+<p>Backed up by barrels in which there is no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>flour, and by stoves in
+which there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no
+clothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to
+her, "You go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money."
+She goes in and gets it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She
+could not help but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should get
+it. No need of your turning your back and pretending you don't hear;
+you do hear. There is no need of your saying you are begged to death.
+There is no need of your wasting your time, and you might as well
+submit first as last. You had better right away take down your
+cheque-book, mark the number of the cheque, fill up the blank, sign
+your name, and hand it to her.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need of wasting time. Those poor children on the back
+street have been hungry long enough. That sick man must have some
+farina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I meet
+this delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of such a
+hard-fisted man, and I say, "Did you get the money?" "Of course," she
+says, "I got the money; that's what I went for. The Lord told me to go
+in and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand."</p>
+
+<p>III. Again I have to tell you that it is woman's specific</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+<h4>RIGHT TO COMFORT</h4>
+
+<p>under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel;
+but all profane as well as sacred history attests that, when the
+crisis comes, she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency.
+How often you have seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of
+frivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to
+a heroine. Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never
+tell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great
+loss to their store, or some of their companions in business play them
+a sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is asked in the
+household, again and again, "What is the matter?" but he believes it a
+sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul.
+Oh sir, your first duty was to</p>
+
+
+<h4>TELL YOUR WIFE</h4>
+
+<p>all about it. She perhaps might not have disentangled your finances or
+extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear
+misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is
+intended for two.</p>
+
+<p>There are business men here who know what I mean. There came a crisis
+in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while
+there came a day when you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>said, "Here I shall have to stop," and you
+called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in
+your employ, and you said, "We have got to stop." You left the store
+suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the
+street and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking
+at you, and blaming you, and denouncing you.</p>
+
+<p>You hastened home. You told your wife all about the affair. What did
+she say? Did she play the butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and
+the ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She
+quailed not under the stroke. She helped you begin to plan right away.
+She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and
+wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your
+affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a
+thin, weak woman's arm holding you up; but while you looked at that
+arm, there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the
+eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the
+beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten, twenty,
+or thirty years ago. You said, "Well, this is the happiest day of my
+life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care&mdash;I
+don't care."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>At the moment you were utterly exhausted. God sent a Deborah to meet
+the host of the Amalekites, and scatter them like chaff over the
+plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels,
+and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their
+Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if
+they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any
+such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a
+Thermopyl&aelig; in your own household, where God will tell you to stand.
+There are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where
+as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by
+Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of Arc.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Again, I remark, it is woman's right to</p>
+
+
+<h4>BRING TO US THE KINGDOM</h4>
+
+<p>of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man.
+Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the
+pleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she
+can more easily become a Christian I prove by the statement that
+three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are
+women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this
+world back to God.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+<h4>THE GREATEST SERMONS</h4>
+
+<p>are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an
+audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent,
+consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of
+God's truth.</p>
+
+<p>A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on
+toward morning&mdash;one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not
+make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened
+the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got
+home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along with you.
+So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and
+make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or
+three o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened,
+and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall
+I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they
+provided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down
+at the table&mdash;the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian
+wife&mdash;when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all
+this, broke into tears, and said: "I can't stand this. Oh, what a
+wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his
+Christian wife and asked her to pray for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>the salvation of his
+immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the
+faith and hope of the Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of
+transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of
+obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord
+Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A
+sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something
+had happened, and the sailors cried, "What's the matter?" He said,</p>
+
+
+<h4>"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS</h4>
+
+<p>haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home
+influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There
+are men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because
+they were any better naturally than some other people, but because
+there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a
+good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a
+Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into
+African jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so
+far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.</p>
+
+<p>I stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of
+their husbands <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an
+oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until
+death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but
+after that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal
+separation? Is there any such thing as</p>
+
+
+<h4>AN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,</h4>
+
+<p>making the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulchre brighter than
+the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma?
+Yes; I stand here as a priest of the most high God to proclaim the
+banns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace
+of Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son away from
+God? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are
+prayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give,
+there are examples for you to make; and I say now, this morning, as
+Paul said to the Corinthian woman: "What knowest thou, O woman, but
+thou canst save thy husband?"</p>
+
+<p>A man was dying, and he said to his wife: "Rebecca, you wouldn't let
+me have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me
+away into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is
+sealed, and you are</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+<h4>THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN."</h4>
+
+<p>O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are
+there not some here who have kindly influences at home&mdash;are there not
+some here who have wandered far away from God, who can remember the
+Christian influences in their early home? Do not despise those
+influences, my brother. If you die without Christ, what will you do
+with your mother's prayers, with your wife's importunities, with your
+sister's entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to
+write to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so
+kindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be but just one strand
+holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like,
+this morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach.
+For the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of your mother's God,
+for the sake of your daughter's God, for the sake of your sister's
+God, come this day and be saved.</p>
+
+<p>V. Lastly, I wish to say that one of the specific rights of women is,
+through the grace of Christ, finally</p>
+
+
+<h4>TO REACH HEAVEN.</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ's mother, in
+heaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the
+mother of Augustine in heaven; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>the Countess of Huntingdon&mdash;who sold
+her splendid jewels to build chapels&mdash;in heaven; while a great many
+others, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little,
+have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a
+change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the
+glass broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the "house
+of many mansions!" No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no
+more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show
+it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for
+aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten
+frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering
+steps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen,
+bitter curse.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and
+struggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your
+door fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But
+God has a crown for you.</p>
+
+<p>I want you to realize, this morning, that He is now making it, and
+whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, whenever
+you have a pang of body or soul He puts another gem in that crown,
+until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for
+another splendor, and God will say <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>to His angel, "The crown is done;
+let her up that she may wear it." And as the Lord of Righteousness
+puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, "Who is she?"
+and Christ will say, "I will tell you who she is. She is the one that
+came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made
+white in the blood of the Lamb."</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BANQUET.</h4>
+
+<p>And then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the
+principalities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will
+blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God, and crimson
+with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and water from
+the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the
+old harpers of heaven will sit there making music with their harps;
+and Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying,
+"She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified
+together." And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace,
+will break forth with congratulation, "Hail! hail!" And there will be
+handwritings on the wall&mdash;not such as struck the Persian noblemen with
+horror, but fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light
+and love and victory: "God hath wiped away all tears from all faces!"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_OLD_FOLKS_VISIT" id="THE_OLD_FOLKS_VISIT"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE OLD FOLKS' VISIT.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"I will go and see him before I die."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Gen. 45:28.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Jacob had long since passed the hundred year mile-stone. In those
+times people were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after
+persons lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of
+his time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to one
+hundred and forty years. A man of undoubted veracity on the
+witness-stand in England swore that he remembered an event one hundred
+and fifty years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut
+three sets of teeth, and died at one hundred and forty years. Joseph
+Crele, of Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and forty years. In 1857 a
+book was printed containing the names of thirty-seven person who lived
+one hundred and forty years, and the names of eleven persons who lived
+one hundred and fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>Among the grand old people of whom we have record was Jacob, the
+shepherd of the text. But he had</p>
+
+
+<h4>A BAD LOT OF BOYS.</h4>
+
+<p>They were jealous and ambitious and every way unprincipled. Joseph,
+however, seemed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>to be an exception; but he had been gone many years,
+and the probability was that he was dead. As sometimes now in a house
+you will find kept at the table a vacant chair, a plate, a knife, a
+fork, for some deceased member of the family, so Jacob kept in his
+heart a place for his beloved Joseph. There sits the old man, the
+flock of one hundred and forty years in their flight having alighted
+long enough to leave the marks of their claw on forehead and cheek and
+temple. His long beard snows down over his chest. His eyes are
+somewhat dim, and he can see further when they are closed than when
+they are open, for he can see clear back into the time when beautiful
+Rachel, his wife, was living, and his children shook the Oriental
+abode with their merriment.</p>
+
+<p>The centenarian is sitting dreaming over the past when he hears a
+wagon rumbling to the front door. He gets up and goes to the door to
+see who has arrived, and his long absent sons from Egypt come in and
+announce to him that Joseph instead of being dead is living in an
+Egyptian palace, with all the investiture of prime minister, next to
+the king in the mightiest empire of all the world!</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE NEWS WAS TOO SUDDEN</h4>
+
+<p>and too glad for the old man, and his cheeks whiten, and he has a
+dazed look, and his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>staff falls out of his hand, and he would have
+dropped had not the sons caught him and led him to a lounge and put
+cold water on his face, and fanned him a little.</p>
+
+<p>In that half delirium the old man mumbles something about his son
+Joseph. He says: "You do not mean Joseph, do you? my dear son who has
+been dead so long. You don't mean Joseph, do you?" But after they had
+fully resuscitated him, and the news was confirmed, the tears begin
+the winding way down the cross roads of the wrinkles, and the sunken
+lips of the old man quiver, and he brings his bent fingers together as
+he says: "Joseph is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die."</p>
+
+<p>It did not take the old man a great while to get ready, I warrant you.
+He put on the best clothes that the shepherd's wardrobe could afford.
+He got into the wagon, and though the aged are cautious and like to
+ride slow, the wagon did not get along fast enough for this old man;
+and when the wagon with the old man met Joseph's chariot coming down
+to meet him, and Joseph got out of the chariot and got into the wagon
+and threw his arms around his father's neck, it was an antithesis of</p>
+
+
+<h4>ROYALTY AND RUSTICITY,</h4>
+
+<p>of simplicity and pomp, of filial affection and paternal love, which
+leaves us so much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>in doubt about whether we had better laugh or cry,
+that we do both. So Jacob kept the resolution of the text: "I will go
+and see him before I die." And if our friends the reporters would like
+to have an appropriate title for this sermon, they might call it "The
+Old Folks' Visit."</p>
+
+<p>What a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not
+almost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers
+had blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded,
+overflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the
+harvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of
+famine had passed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is
+overwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped,
+though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired
+the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and
+now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the
+childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are
+fresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as
+fresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the
+boy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family
+record the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I
+said to my parents: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>"What is this record, and what does it mean?"
+Their chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them</p>
+
+
+<h4>A VERY TENDER SORROW.</h4>
+
+<p>What does that all mean? Why, it means our children departed are ours
+yet, and that cord of attachment reaching across the years will hold
+us until it brings us together in the palace, as Jacob and Joseph were
+brought together. That is one thing that makes old people die happy.
+They realize it is reunion with those from whom they have long been
+separated.</p>
+
+<p>I am often asked as pastor&mdash;and every pastor is asked the
+question&mdash;"Will my children be</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHILDREN IN HEAVEN,</h4>
+
+<p>and forever children?" Well, there was no doubt a great change in
+Joseph from the time Jacob lost him, and the time when Jacob found
+him&mdash;between the boy seventeen years of age and the man in midlife,
+his forehead developed with a great business estate; but Jacob was
+glad to get back Joseph anyhow, and it did not make much difference to
+the old man whether the boy looked older, or looked younger. And it
+will be enough joy for that parent if he can get back that son, that
+daughter, at the gate of heaven, whether the departed loved one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>shall
+come a cherub or in full-grown angelhood. There must be a change
+wrought by that celestial climate and by those supernal years, but it
+will only be from loveliness to more loveliness, and from health to
+more radiant health. O parent, as you think of the darling panting and
+white in membranous croup, I want you to know it will be gloriously
+bettered in that land where there has never been a death and where all
+the inhabitants will live on in the great future as long as God!
+Joseph was Joseph notwithstanding the palace, and your child will be
+your child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of everlasting
+noon. What</p>
+
+
+<h4>A THRILLING VISIT</h4>
+
+<p>was that of the old shepherd to the prime-minister Joseph! I see the
+old countryman seated in the palace looking around at the mirrors and
+the fountains and the carved pillars, and oh! how he wishes that
+Rachel, his wife, was alive and she could have come there with him to
+see their son in his great house. "Oh," says the old man within
+himself, "I do wish Rachel could be here to see all this!" I visited
+at the farmhouse of the father of Millard Fillmore when the son was
+President of the United States, and the octogenerian farmer
+entertained me until eleven o'clock at night telling me what great
+things he saw in his son's house at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>Washington, and what Daniel
+Webster said to him, and how grandly Millard treated his father in the
+White House. The old man's face was illumined with the story until
+almost the midnight. He had just been visiting his son at the Capitol.
+And I suppose it was something of the same joy that thrilled the heart
+of the old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime-minister.
+It is</p>
+
+
+<h4>A GREAT DAY WITH YOU</h4>
+
+<p>when your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand
+around with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so
+old. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little
+restless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in
+their own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a
+benediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and
+you make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will
+probably not visit you very often&mdash;perhaps never again. You go to
+their room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are
+properly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better
+than the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real
+interest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.
+Joseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of
+his father than you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>do of your parents. The probability is, before
+they leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.
+Grandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your
+children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation
+in the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!</p>
+
+<p>Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever
+may have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a
+palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two most
+memorable visits will be the first and the last. Those two pictures
+will hang in the hall of your memory while memory lasts, and you will
+remember just how they looked, and where they sat, and what they said,
+and at what figure of the carpet, and at what door-sill they parted
+with you, giving you the final good-bye. Do not be embarrassed if your
+father come to town and he have the manners of the shepherd, and if
+your mother come to town and there be in her hat no sign of costly
+millinery. The wife of Emperor Theodosius said a wise thing when she
+said: "Husband, remember what you lately were, and remember what you
+are, and be thankful."</p>
+
+<p>By this time you all notice what</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+<h4>KINDLY PROVISION</h4>
+
+<p>Joseph made for his father Jacob. Joseph did not say: "I can't have
+the old man around this place. How clumsy he would look climbing up
+these marble stairs, and walking over these mosaics! Then, he would be
+putting his hands upon some of these frescoes. People would wonder
+where that old greenhorn came from. He would shock all the Egyptian
+court with his manners at table. Besides that, he might get sick on my
+hands, and he might be querulous, and he might talk to me as though I
+were only a boy, when I am the second man in all the realm. Of course,
+he must not suffer, and if there is famine in his country&mdash;and I hear
+there is&mdash;I will send him some provisions; but I can't take a man from
+Padan-aram and introduce him into this polite Egyptian court. What a
+nuisance it is to have</p>
+
+
+<h4>POOR RELATIONS!"</h4>
+
+<p>Joseph did not say that, but he rushed out to meet his father with
+perfect abandon of affection, and brought him up to the palace, and
+introduced him to the Emperor, and provided for all the rest of the
+father's days, and nothing was too good for the old man while living;
+and when he was dead Joseph, with military escort, took his father's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>remains to the family cemetery at Machpelah and put them down beside
+Rachel, Joseph's mother. Would God all children were as kind to their
+parents!</p>
+
+<p>If the father have large property, and he be wise enough to keep it in
+his own name, he will be respected by the heirs; but how often it is
+when the son finds the father in famine, as Joseph found Jacob in
+famine, the young people make it very hard for the old man. They are
+so surprised he eats with a knife instead of a fork. They are
+chagrined at his antediluvian habits. They are provoked because he
+cannot hear as well as he used to, and when he asks it over again, and
+the son has to repeat it, he bawls in the old man's ear: "I hope you
+hear that!" How long he must wear the old coat or the old hat before
+they get him a new one! How chagrined they are at his independence of
+the English grammar! How long he hangs on! Seventy years and not gone
+yet! Seventy-five years and not gone yet! Eighty years and not gone
+yet! Will he ever go? They think it of no use to have a doctor in his
+last sickness, and go up to the drugstore and get a dose of something
+that makes him worse, and economize on a coffin, and beat the
+undertaker down to the last point, giving a note for the reduced
+amount which they never pay! I have officiated at obsequies of aged
+people where the family have been so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>inordinately resigned to the
+Providence that I felt like taking my text from Proverbs: "The eye
+that mocketh at its father, and refuseth to obey its mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it." In other words, such an ingrate ought to have a flock of crows
+for pall-bearers! I congratulate you if you have the honor of
+providing for aged parents. The blessing of the Lord God of Joseph and
+Jacob will be on you.</p>
+
+<p>I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the
+most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of
+a son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the
+servants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of
+carriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer
+afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the
+house where he was not welcome, and there were musical instruments of
+all sorts to regale him; and when life had passed, the neighbors came
+out and expressed all honor possible, and carried him to the village
+Machpelah and put him down beside the Rachel with whom he had lived
+more than half a century.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+<h4>SHARE YOUR SUCCESSES</h4>
+
+<p>with the old people. The probability is, that the principles they
+inculcated achieved your fortune. Give them a Christian percentage of
+kindly consideration. Let Joseph divide with Jacob the pasture fields
+of Goshen and the glories of the Egyptian court.</p>
+
+<p>And here I would like to sing the praises of the sisterhood who
+remained unmarried that they might administer to aged parents. The
+brutal world calls these</p>
+
+
+<h4>SELF-SACRIFICING ONES</h4>
+
+<p>by ungallant names, and says they are peculiar or angular; but if you
+had had as many annoyances as they have had, Xantippe would have been
+an angel compared with you. It is easier to take care of five
+rollicking, romping children than of one childish old man. Among the
+best women of Brooklyn and of yonder transpontine city are those who
+allowed the bloom of life to pass away while they were caring for
+their parents. While other maidens were sound asleep, they were
+soaking the old man's feet or tucking up the covers around the invalid
+mother. While other maidens were in the cotillon, they were dancing
+attendance upon rheumatism and spreading plasters for the lame back of
+the septuagenarian, and heating catnip tea for insomnia.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>In almost every circle of our kindred there has been some</p>
+
+
+<h4>QUEEN OF SELF-SACRIFICE</h4>
+
+<p>to whom jeweled hand after jeweled hand was offered in marriage, but
+who stayed on the old place because of the sense of filial obligation
+until the health was gone and the attractiveness of personal presence
+had vanished. Brutal society may call such a one by a nickname. God
+calls her daughter, and Heaven calls her saint, and I call her
+domestic martyr. A half dozen ordinary women have not as much nobility
+as could be found in the smallest joint of the little finger of her
+left hand. Although the world has stood six thousand years, this is
+the first apotheosis of maidenhood, although in the long line of those
+who have declined marriage that they might be qualified for some
+especial mission are the names of Anna Ross, and Margaret
+Breckinridge, and Mary Shelton, and Anna Etheridge, and Georgiana
+Willetts, the angels of the battlefields of Fair Oaks, and Lookout
+Mountain, and Chancellorsville, and Cooper Shop Hospital: and though
+single life has been honored by the fact that the three grandest men
+of the Bible&mdash;John and Paul and Christ&mdash;were</p>
+
+
+<h4>CELIBATES.</h4>
+
+<p>Let the ungrateful world sneer at the maiden aunt, but God has a
+throne burnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in
+heaven there is a vase containing two jewels, the one brighter than
+the Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any diamond
+ever found in the districts of Golconda&mdash;the one jewel by the lapidary
+of the palace cut with the words: "Inasmuch as ye did it to father;"
+the other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words:
+"Inasmuch as ye did it to mother." "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse"
+is the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton, who found an old woman who
+had been turned off by her prospered sons; but I thank God I may find
+in my text "Over the hills to the palace."</p>
+
+<p>As if to disgust us with unfilial conduct, the Bible presents us the
+story of Micah, who stole the eleven hundred shekels from his mother,
+and the story of Absalom, who tried to dethrone his father. But all
+history is beautiful with stories of filial fidelity. Epaminondas, the
+warrior, found his chief delight in reciting to his parents his
+victories. There goes &AElig;neas from burning Troy, on his shoulders
+Anchises, his father. The Athenians punished with death any unfilial
+conduct. There goes beautiful Ruth escorting venerable Naomi across
+the desert amid the howling of the wolves and the barking of the
+jackals. John Lawrence burned at the stake in Colchester, was cheered
+in the flames by his children, who said: "O God, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>strengthen thy
+servant and keep thy promise!" And Christ in the hour of excruciation
+provided for His old mother. Jacob kept his resolution, "I will go and
+see him before I die," and a little while after we find them walking
+the tessellated floor of the palace, Jacob and Joseph, the
+prime-minister proud of the shepherd.</p>
+
+<p>I may say in regard to the most of you that your parents have probably
+visited you for the last time, or will soon pay you such a visit, and
+I have wondered if they will ever visit you</p>
+
+
+<h4>IN THE KING'S PALACE.</h4>
+
+<p>"Oh," you say, "I am in the pit of sin!" Joseph was in the pit. "Oh,"
+you say, "I am in the prison of mine iniquity!" Joseph was once in
+prison. "Oh," you say, "I didn't have a fair chance; I was denied
+maternal kindness!" Joseph was denied maternal attendance. "Oh," you
+say, "I am far away from the land of my nativity!" Joseph was far from
+home. "Oh," you say, "I have been betrayed and exasperated!" Did not
+Joseph's brethren sell him to a passing Ishmaelitish caravan? Yet God
+brought him to that emblazoned residence; and if you will trust His
+grace in Jesus Christ you, too, will be empalaced. Oh, what a day that
+will be when the old folks come from an adjoining mansion in heaven,
+and find you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>amid the alabaster pillars of the throne-room and living
+with the king! They are coming up the steps now, and the epauletted
+guard of the palace rushes in and says: "Your father's coming, your
+mother's coming!" And when under the arches of precious stones and on
+the pavement of porphyry you greet each other, the scene will eclipse
+the meeting on the Goshen highway, when Joseph and Jacob fell on each
+other's neck and wept a good while.</p>
+
+<p>But oh, how changed the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into
+the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into
+immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the
+sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit
+passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and
+dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer
+has been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on
+earth before we died, now we visit you in your new home after our
+ascension." And father will say, "Mother, don't you see Joseph is yet
+alive?" and mother will say, "Yes, father, Joseph is yet alive." And
+then they will talk over their earthly anxieties in regard to you, and
+the midnight supplications in your behalf, and they will recite to
+each other the old Scripture passage with which they used to cheer
+their staggering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>faith: "I will be a God to thee and thy seed after
+thee." Oh, the palace, the palace, the palace! That is what Richard
+Baxter called "The Saints' Everlasting Rest." That is what John Bunyan
+called the "Celestial City." That is Young's "Night Thoughts" turned
+into morning exultations. That is Gray's "Elegy in a Churchyard"
+turned to resurrection spectacle. That is the "Cotter's Saturday
+Night" exchanged for the Cotter's Sabbath morning. That is the
+shepherd of Salisbury Plain amid the flocks on the hills of heaven.
+That is the famine-struck Padan-aram turned into the rich pasture
+fields of Goshen. That is Jacob visiting Joseph at the emerald
+castle.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="THE_DOMESTIC_CIRCLE" id="THE_DOMESTIC_CIRCLE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord
+hath done for thee."<span class="sc" style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;Mark 5:19.</span></p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>There are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which
+to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish
+that they had some such great opportunity in which to display their
+Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they
+only wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach
+righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; all they want is only
+an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now the evangelist
+comes to us, and he practically says: "I will show you a place where
+you can exhibit all that is grand, and beautiful, and glorious in
+Christian character, and that is the domestic circle."</p>
+
+
+<h4>EVERY MAN'S OPPORTUNITY.</h4>
+
+<p>If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere he will not be
+faithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at
+the gate of the temple, he will never be able to preach three thousand
+souls into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>not take pains
+to instruct in the way of salvation the jailor of the Philippian
+dungeon, he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not faithful in a
+skirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is we are
+all placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve
+God; and we ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of
+usefulness which we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing
+question with you and with me ought to be: "Lord, what wilt thou have
+me now and here to do?"</p>
+
+
+<h4>WHAT A HOME IS.</h4>
+
+<p>There is one word in my text around which the most of our thoughts
+will this morning revolve. That word is "Home." Ask ten different men
+the meaning of that word, and they will give you ten different
+definitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at
+the table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books,
+devotion at the altar. To him it means a greeting at the door and a
+smile at the chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping its hands
+with laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the ripples sleep the
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Ask another man what home is, and he will tell you it is want, looking
+out of a cheerless firegrate, kneading hunger in an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>empty bread tray.
+The damp air shivering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children
+robbers and murderers in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every
+face a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from
+the front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that door-sill. Vestibule of
+the pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forging everlasting
+chains. Faggots for an unending funeral pile. Awful word! It is
+spelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats
+with the death agony of despair.</p>
+
+<p>The word "Home" in the one case means everything bright. The word
+"Home" in the other case means everything terrific.</p>
+
+<p>I shall speak to you this morning of home as a test of character, home
+as a refuge, home as a political safeguard, home as a school, and home
+as a type of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And in the first place I remark, that home is a powerful test of
+character. The disposition in public may be in gay costume, while in
+private it is in dishabille. As play actors may appear in one way on
+the stage, and may appear in another way behind the scenes, so private
+character may be very different from public character. Private
+character is often public character turned wrong side out. A man may
+receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>of
+smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are
+business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and
+good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and
+their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam
+breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HOME MANNERS.</h4>
+
+<p>Reputation is only the shadow of character, and a very small house
+sometimes will cast a very long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with
+myrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as bright and warm as a
+sheaf of sunbeams, and yet they may only be a magnificent show window
+to a wretched stock of goods. There is many a man who is affable in
+public life and amid commercial spheres who, in a cowardly way, takes
+his anger and his petulance home, and drops them on the domestic
+circle.</p>
+
+<p>The reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because
+they do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their
+petulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do
+not let their notes go to protest. It does not pay. Or for the same
+reason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his
+stock at less than the right price, lest it depreciate the value. As
+at some time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a
+tempestuous night. There are people who in public act the
+philanthropist, who at home act the Nero, with respect to their
+slippers and their gown.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AUDUBON'S GREATNESS.</h4>
+
+<p>Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through
+the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful
+birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript,
+and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and
+rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the
+manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad
+temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all
+the great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And
+yet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are
+utterly unreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of
+raiment will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private
+is making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank
+that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in
+circulation with no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at
+home. If we have it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have
+not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public
+plausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the
+slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a
+mighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere,
+whether you demonstrate it or not.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HOME A REFUGE.</h4>
+
+<p>Again, I remark that home is a refuge. Life is the United States army
+on the national road to Mexico, a long march, with ever and anon a
+skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack the
+arms, we hang up the war cap and lay our head on the knapsack, we
+sleep until the morning bugle calls us to marching and action. How
+pleasant it is to rehearse the victories and the surprises, and the
+attacks of the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle!</p>
+
+<p>Yea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts, and torn sails, and
+hulk aleak, we put in at the harbor of home. Blessed harbor! There we
+go for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The candle in the window
+is to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children
+go forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the "Narrows" take the
+hand of ships. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>door-sill of the home is the wharf where heavy
+life is unladen.</p>
+
+<p>There is the place where we may talk of what we have done without
+being charged with self adulation. There is the place where we may
+lounge without being thought ungraceful. There is the place where we
+may express affection without being thought silly. There is the place
+where we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles.
+Forlorn earth pilgrim! no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is
+brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent
+for marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest
+from this scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain. God pity the
+man or the woman who has no home!</p>
+
+
+<h4>A POLITICAL SAFEGUARD.</h4>
+
+<p>Further, I remark that home is a political safeguard. The safety of
+the State must be built on the safety of the home. Why cannot France
+come to a placid republic? Ever and anon there is a threat of national
+capsize. France as a nation has not the right kind of a Christian
+home. The Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for a
+republic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute
+necessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to
+make the family adhere, there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>will not be enough political principle
+to make the State adhere. "No home" means the Goths and Vandals, means
+the Nomads of Asia, means the Numideans of Africa, changing from place
+to place, according as the pasture happens to change. Confounded be
+all those Babels of iniquity which would overtower and destroy the
+home. The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails
+will sink the frigate of the constitution. Jails and penitentiaries
+and armies and navies are not our best defence. The door of the home
+is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and
+the chimneys of our dwelling houses are the grandest monuments of
+safety and triumph. No home; no republic.</p>
+
+
+<h4>AS A SCHOOL.</h4>
+
+<p>Further, I remark, that home is a school. Old ground must be turned up
+with subsoil plough, and it must be harrowed and re-harrowed, and then
+the crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less
+culture. Now youth and childhood are new ground, and all the
+influences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after life
+luxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approbation, all the
+good cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your
+children. And every ebullition of anger and every uncontrollable
+display of indignation will be fuel to their disposition twenty, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>or
+thirty, or forty years from now&mdash;fuel for a bad fire a quarter of a
+century from this.</p>
+
+<p>You praise the intelligence of your child too much sometimes when you
+think he is not aware of it, and you will see the result of it before
+ten years of age in his annoying affectations. You praise his beauty,
+supposing he is not large enough to understand what you say, and you
+will find him standing on a high chair before a flattering mirror.
+Words and deeds and example are the seed of character, and children
+are very apt to be the second edition of their parents. Abraham begat
+Isaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the ancestral line; but Herod
+begat Archelaus, so iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility
+comes upon parents in view of this subject!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, make your home the brightest place on earth, if you would charm
+your children to the high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion!
+Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts
+gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do
+not expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover
+up your walls with such pictures as West's "Death on a Pale Horse," or
+Tintoretto's "Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them, if you
+have pictures, with "The Hawking Party," and "The Mill by the Mountain
+Stream," and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>"The Fox Hunt," and "The Children Amid Flowers," and
+"The Harvest Scene," and "The Saturday Night Marketing."</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHEERFUL HOMES.</h4>
+
+<p>Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's
+frisk, and quail's whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the
+rock at the mountain-top clear down to the meadow ferns under the
+shadow of the steep, comes looking for the steepest place to leap off
+at, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled
+with tempest and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every
+mountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam,
+and there were nothing but simooms blowing among the hills, and there
+were neither lark's carol nor humming bird's trill, nor waterfall's
+dash, but only a bear's bark, and panther's scream, and wolf's howl,
+then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when
+God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with
+gladness, let us take into our home circle all innocent hilarity, all
+brightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad
+girls in preparation for bad men and bad women.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, my friends, take into your homes Christian principle. Can
+it be that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>in any of the comfortable homes of my congregation the
+voice of prayer is never lifted? What! No supplication at night for
+protection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care? How, my
+brother, my sister, will you answer God in the Day of Judgment, with
+reference to your children? It is a plain question and therefore I ask
+it. In the tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour out His
+fury upon the families that call not upon His name. O parents! when
+you are dead and gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of the
+tombstones will your children look back and think of father and mother
+at family prayer? Will they take the old family Bible and open it and
+see the mark of tears of contrition and tears of consoling promise
+wept by eyes long before gone out into darkness?</p>
+
+
+<h4>CHILDREN'S CURSES.</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle in the hearts of your
+children, and you do not warn them against evil, and you do not invite
+them to holiness and to God, and they wander on into dissipation and
+into infidelity, and at last make shipwreck of their immortal soul, on
+their deathbed and in their Day of Judgment they will curse you!
+Seated by the register or the stove, what if on the wall should come
+out the history of your children? What a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>history&mdash;the mortal and
+immortal life of your loved ones! Every parent is writing the history
+of his child. He is writing it, composing it into a song, or turning
+it into a groan.</p>
+
+<p>My mind runs back to one of the best of early homes. Prayer, like a
+roof, over it. Peace, like an atmosphere, in it. Parents,
+personifications of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The two
+pillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. But shall I
+ever forget that early home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun that
+warms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets the star that guided him. Yes,
+when love has gone out on the heart's altar and memory has emptied its
+urn into forgetfulness. Then, the home of my childhood, I will forget
+thee! The family altar of a father's importunity and a mother's
+tenderness, the voices of affection, the funerals of our dead father
+and mother with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees
+making a perpetual arbor of love, and peace, and kindness&mdash;then I will
+forget them&mdash;then and only then. You know, my brother, that a hundred
+times you have been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I
+have been describing. You have often had raging temptations, but you
+know what has held you with supernatural grasp. I tell you a man who
+has had such a good home as that never gets over it, and a man who has
+had a bad early home never gets over it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>Again, I remark, that home is a type of heaven. To bring us to that
+home Christ left His home. Far up and far back in the history of
+heaven there came a period when its most illustrious citizen was about
+to absent Himself. He was not going to sail from beach to beach; we
+have often done that. He was not going to put out from one hemisphere
+to another hemisphere; many of us have done that. But he was to sail
+from world to world, the spaces unexplored and the immensities
+untraveled. No world had ever hailed heaven, and so far as we know
+heaven had never hailed any other world. I think that the windows and
+the balconies were thronged, and that the pearline beach was crowded
+with those who had come to see Him sail out the harbor of light into
+the oceans beyond.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE EXILE.</h4>
+
+<p>Out, and out, and out, and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and
+down He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived.
+His disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on
+earth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something
+grand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did
+He sail? Why was this the place of His destination? I question the
+shepherds, I question the camel drivers, I question the angels. I have
+found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>out. He was an exile. But the world has had plenty of
+exiles&mdash;Abraham an exile from Ur of the Chaldees; John an exile from
+Ephesus; Kosciusko an exile from Poland; Mazzini an exile from Rome;
+Emmett an exile from Ireland; Victor Hugo an exile from France;
+Kossuth an exile from Hungary. But this one of whom I speak to-day had
+such resounding farewell and came into such chilling reception&mdash;for
+not even an hostler came out with his lantern to help Him in&mdash;that He
+is more to be celebrated than any other expatriated one of earth or
+heaven.</p>
+
+
+<h4>HOMESICKNESS.</h4>
+
+<p>It is ninety-five million miles from here to the sun, and all
+astronomers agree in saying that our solar system is only one of the
+small wheels of the great machinery of the universe, turning round
+some one great centre, the centre so far distant it is beyond all
+imagination and calculation; and if, as some think, that great centre
+in the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when He came
+here. Have you ever thought of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you
+know what homesickness is, when you have been only a few weeks absent
+from the domestic circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from
+home. Some of you feel homesickness when you are a hundred or a
+thousand miles away from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>domestic circle. Christ was more
+millions of miles away from home than you could calculate if all your
+life you did nothing but calculate. You know what it is to be homesick
+even amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts, and He
+was athirst, and He was ahungered, and He was on the way from being
+born in another man's barn to being buried in another man's grave. I
+have read how the Swiss, when they are far away from their native
+country, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they
+fall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.
+But oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial
+riches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!
+Homesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
+of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that
+homesickness suffered to get us home!</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE HOME-GATHERING.</h4>
+
+<p>At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. "Heaven is
+our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in
+all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in
+holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed
+that there is almost always a son or a daughter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>absent&mdash;absent from
+home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.
+Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children
+home with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers
+and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the
+door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
+saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,
+incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and
+sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they
+passed through dry shod.</p>
+
+<p>Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not
+stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly
+sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and
+empires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be
+buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let
+everlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no
+crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful
+home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.</p>
+
+
+<h4>A DREAM.</h4>
+
+<p>One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around
+about <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter&mdash;on the lounge, half
+awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.
+It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the
+cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical
+fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than
+Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for
+thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I
+saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I
+saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off
+this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter
+at the forge?" but they never put off the holiday attire.</p>
+
+<p>And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the
+dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills,
+the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers
+and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I
+see. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: "Where
+do the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they
+sit?" And the answer was made me:</p>
+
+
+<h4>"WE HAVE NO POOR</h4>
+
+<p>in this country." And then I wandered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>out to find the hovels of the
+destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a
+tear could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was bewildered, and I
+sat down under the branches of a great tree, and I said: "Where am I?
+And whence comes all this scene?"</p>
+
+<p>And then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and
+across the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all
+about me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as
+they shouted I thought I knew their voices; but then they were so
+gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed
+that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped
+their hands and shouted "Welcome, welcome!" the mystery all vanished,
+and I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all
+together again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around, and I
+said; "Are we all here?" and the voices of many generations responded
+"All here!" And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks,
+and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and
+the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all
+together began to leap and shout and sing: "Home, home, home, home!"</p>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;65: &nbsp;'it' replaced with 'if' in the sentence "and if you should strike him..."<br />
+Page 103: &nbsp;seciety replaced with society<br />
+Page 193: &nbsp;Christion replaced with Christian<br />
+Page 209: &nbsp;beqeath replaced with bequeath<br />
+Page 209: &nbsp;wordliness replaced for worldliness<br />
+Page 276: &nbsp;couse replaced with course<br />
+<br />
+<p class="noin">The Table of Contents lists the last chapter as "Home, Sweet Home",
+while the body of the text lists it as "The Domestic Circle". This has been retained.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wedding Ring
+       A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those
+       Contemplating Matrimony
+
+Author: T. De Witt Talmage
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2007 [EBook #22343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WEDDING RING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Wedding Ring.
+
+A Series of Discourses for Husbands and
+Wives and Those Contemplating
+Matrimony.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+By
+
+T. DE WITT TALMAGE.
+
+
+_Reprinted from THE CHRISTIAN HERALD._
+
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
+LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
+BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1896,
+BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+The Choice of a Wife,                                                5
+
+The Choice of a Husband,                                            24
+
+Clandestine Marriage,                                               42
+
+Duties of Husbands to Wives,                                        60
+
+Duties of Wives to Husbands,                                        78
+
+Costume and Morals,                                                 95
+
+Husbands and Wives,                                                114
+
+Matrimonial Discords,                                              136
+
+Hotels Versus Home,                                                148
+
+Easy Divorce,                                                      166
+
+Maternity,                                                         184
+
+The Children's Patrimony,                                          198
+
+The Mother of All,                                                 217
+
+Sisterly Influence,                                                234
+
+Trials of Housekeeping,                                            252
+
+Woman Enthroned,                                                   268
+
+Old Folks' Visit,                                                  286
+
+Home, Sweet Home,                                                  303
+
+
+
+
+The Wedding Ring.
+
+
+THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.
+
+    "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+    among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+    uncircumcised Philistines?"--JUDGES 14:3.
+
+
+Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to
+marriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in
+asking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with
+her looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the
+hostile families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining, and saturnine
+creature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit
+him forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically
+saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your
+own country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you
+propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of
+lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a
+Philistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no
+pomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy
+brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of
+the uncircumcised Philistines?"
+
+
+BEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.
+
+Excuseless was he for such a choice in a land and amid a race
+celebrated for female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of
+which self-denying Abigail, and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam,
+and pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary, who hugged to her heart
+the blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded
+in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye, the
+gracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only
+typical of the greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise
+excuseless is any man in our time who makes lifelong alliance with any
+one who, because of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or
+intellectual vanity, or _moral twistification_, may be said to be of
+the Philistines.
+
+
+MODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS.
+
+The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such
+splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,
+motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have
+not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not
+only man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is
+the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea,
+during the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened
+for female education, the women of the country are better educated
+than the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality
+at the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have
+difficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make
+appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of
+good womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour
+I entered this life until now, I hope the delusion will last until I
+embark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this
+course of sermons something that seems severe, I am neither cynical
+nor disgruntled.
+
+
+NO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.
+
+There are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every
+home of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women,
+self-sacrificing women, holy women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the
+feet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the
+person of His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and spectacled
+grandmothers Lois, bending over Bibles whose precepts they have
+followed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women
+that are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to
+bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all
+their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except
+those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and
+more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all
+this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some
+of you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of
+you from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my
+text: "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or
+among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the
+uncircumcised Philistines?"
+
+
+MARRIAGE NOT FOR ALL.
+
+That marriage is the destination of the human race is a mistake that I
+want to correct before I go further. There are multitudes who never
+will marry, and still greater multitudes who are not fit to marry. In
+Great Britain to-day there are nine hundred and forty-eight thousand
+more women than men, and that, I understand, is about the ratio in
+America. By mathematical and inexorable law, you see, millions of
+women will never marry. The supply for matrimony is greater than the
+demand, the first lesson of which is that every woman ought to prepare
+to take care of herself if need be. Then there are thousands of men
+who have no right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of
+character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman.
+Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so
+that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is
+unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his
+purity. What right have _you, O masculine beast_! whose life has been
+loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in
+the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a
+dove?
+
+
+THE FIRST STEP.
+
+But the majority of you will marry, and have a right to marry, and as
+your religious teacher I wish to say to these men, in the choice of a
+wife first of all seek divine direction. About thirty-five years ago,
+when Martin Farquhar Tupper, the English poet, urged men to prayer
+before they decided upon matrimonial association, people laughed. And
+some of them have lived to laugh on the other side of their mouth.
+
+
+EMINENT BLUNDERERS.
+
+The need of divine direction I argue from the fact that so many men,
+and some of them strong and wise, have wrecked their lives at this
+juncture. Witness Samson and this woman of Timnath! Witness
+_Socrates_, pecked of the historical Xantippe! Witness _Job_, whose
+wife had nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses
+of profanity! Witness _Ananias_, a liar, who might perhaps have been
+cured by a truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as
+himself--Sapphira! Witness _John Wesley_, one of the best men that
+ever lived, united to one of the most outrageous and scandalous of
+women, who sat in City Road Chapel, making mouths at him while he
+preached! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of _John Ruskin_,
+the great art essayist, and _Frederick W. Robertson_, the great
+preacher! Witness a thousand
+
+
+HELLS ON EARTH
+
+kindled by unworthy wives, termagants that scold like a March
+north-easter; female spendthrifts, that put their husbands into
+fraudulent schemes to get money enough to meet the lavishment of
+domestic expenditure; _opium-using women_--about four hundred thousand
+of them in the United States--who will have the drug, though it should
+cause the eternal damnation of the whole household; heartless and
+overbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet
+married--married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build
+the low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't
+stand it at home. On this sea of matrimony, where so many have been
+wrecked, am I not right in advising divine pilotage?
+
+
+NUMEROUS PITFALLS.
+
+Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that
+society is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom
+they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the
+dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster,
+and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their
+work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological
+hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he
+offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands.
+They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are
+so different from the sample by which they bargained. They were simply
+swindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's
+Evangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for Martha Washington.
+
+Aye, as the Indian, chief boasts, of the scalps he has taken, so
+there are in society to-day many coquettes who boast of the masculine
+hearts they have captured. And these women, though they may live amid
+richest upholstery, are not so honorable as the cyprians of the
+street, for these advertise their infamy, while the former profess
+heaven while they mean hell.
+
+There is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad it is no wonder that
+some cannot tell the genuine coin from the base. Do you not realize
+you need divine guidance when I remind you that mistake is possible in
+this important affair, and, if made, is irrevocable?
+
+
+A MISTAKE IRREPARABLE.
+
+The worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You
+see, it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the
+more galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, and in
+your presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you on
+the opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were
+united, might take the ring off of the finger, might rend the
+wedding-veil asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from the family
+Bible record, but all that would fail to unmarry you. It is better not
+to make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men and women
+do not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and how
+are you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? There is only one Being
+in the universe who can tell you whom to choose, and that is the Lord
+of Paradise. He made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each
+other. Adam had not a large group of women from whom to select his
+wife, but it is fortunate, judging from some mistakes which she
+afterward made, that it was Eve or nothing.
+
+There is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly
+as Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was
+made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his
+twenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely
+upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three
+possibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate
+of Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth,
+whose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson,
+the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing
+and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to
+the audience and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to
+be married to this woman;" by the fate of Bulwer, the novelist, whose
+wife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful
+house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the
+dozen dogs whom she entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton,
+who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called
+her a rose, the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be
+so, for I feel the thorns daily;" by the fate of an Englishman whose
+wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the
+sea; by the fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose wife threw a
+cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment--by
+all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you
+to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial
+state, which decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two
+hells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell
+hereafter.
+
+
+NOBLE WIVES.
+
+By the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her husband was pleading in
+court, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression
+he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from
+prison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be
+injurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one
+of the bookcases; by the good fortune of Roland, in Louis' time,
+whose wife translated and composed for her husband, while Secretary of
+the Interior--talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the
+happiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable
+of being prime counsellor and companion in brightness and in
+grief--pray to Almighty God, morning, noon, and night that at the
+right time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest,
+loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not sent to you, that you may
+be sent to her.
+
+
+AVOID MATCHMAKERS.
+
+At this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance
+be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every
+community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These
+brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious
+innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis,
+and that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human
+being, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who
+is ignorant of the future, give such direction as you require at such
+a crisis?
+
+Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine
+guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon,
+whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was
+multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great
+wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud
+tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he
+retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment.
+And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a
+mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering.
+And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is better to dwell in the
+corner of the housetop than with _a brawling woman_ in a wide house."
+And one day during the rainy season the water leaked through the roof
+of the palace and began to drop in a pail or pan set there to catch
+it. And at one side of him all day long the water went drop! drop!
+drop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about
+this, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words
+falling on his ear in ceaseless pelting--drop! drop! drop! and he
+seized his pen and wrote: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day
+and _a contentious woman_ are alike." If Solomon had been as prayerful
+at the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how much domestic
+infelicity he would have avoided!
+
+But prayer about this will amount to nothing unless you pray soon
+enough. Wait until you are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul
+is disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will
+answer your own prayers, and you will mistake your own infatuation for
+the voice of God.
+
+
+AVOID SCOFFERS.
+
+If you have this prayerful spirit you will surely avoid all female
+scoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of
+them in all communities. It must be told that, though the only
+influence that keeps woman from being estimated and treated as a
+slave--aye, as a brute and a beast of burden--is Christianity, since
+where it is not dominant she is so treated, yet there are women who
+will so far forget themselves and forget their God that they will go
+and hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most sacred
+things of the soul. A good woman, over-persuaded by her husband, may
+go once to hear such a tirade against the Christian religion, not
+fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice.
+
+A woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of religion, said to me: "I
+was persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecturer once,
+but going home, I said to him: 'My dear husband, I would not go again
+though my declinature should result in our divorcement forever.'" And
+the woman was right. If after all that Christ and Christianity have
+done for a woman, she can go again and again to hear such assaults,
+she is _an awful creature_, and you had better not come near such a
+reeking lepress. She needs to be washed, and for three weeks to be
+soaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year, fumigated, before she
+is fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a
+Christian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian
+religion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in
+a life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.
+
+
+TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.
+
+What you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine,
+not a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping
+gadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as
+to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul,
+one that cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep.
+There will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will
+both want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you!
+When your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in
+heaven, and not charge upon you with a bitter, "I told you so." As
+far as I can analyze it, _sincerity and earnestness_ are the
+foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to
+get that, and you get nothing but what you will wish you never had
+got.
+
+
+BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.
+
+Don't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his
+eye settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine
+wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice
+except a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of
+the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God
+gives it He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the
+good _Princess of Wales_ dismounted from the railtrain last summer,
+and I saw her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the
+day before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now
+the wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the
+Princess passed through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and
+those who could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their
+stupor, would get up on their elbows to look at her, and wan and
+wasted lips prayed an audible prayer: "God bless the Princess of
+Wales! Doesn't she look beautiful?"
+
+But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!
+Explosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a
+scoundrel with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive
+his chariot wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts
+and gullies. But there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,
+whom a rough and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and though
+their features may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy,
+yet they have graces of soul that will keep them attractive for time
+and glorious through all eternity.
+
+There are two or three circumstances in which the plainest wife is a
+queen of beauty to her husband, whatever her stature or profile. By
+financial panic or betrayal of business partner, the man goes down,
+and returning to his home that evening he says: "_I am ruined_; I am
+in disgrace forever; I care not whether I live or die." It is an
+agitated story he is telling in the household that winter night. He
+says: "The furniture must go, the house must go, the social position
+must go," and from being sought for obsequiously they must be
+cold-shouldered everywhere. After he ceases talking, and the wife has
+heard all in silence, she says: "Is that all? Why, you had nothing
+when I married you, and you have only come back to where you started.
+If you think that my happiness and that of the children depend on
+these trappings, you do not know me, though we have lived together
+thirty years. God is not dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not
+suspended payment, and if you don't mind, I don't care a cent. What
+little we need of food and raiment the rest of our lives we can get,
+and I don't propose to sit down and mope and groan. Mary, hand me that
+darning-needle. I declare! I have forgotten to set the rising for
+those cakes!" And while she is busy at it he hears her humming
+Newton's old hymn, "To-Morrow:"
+
+    "It can bring with it nothing
+      But He will bear us through;
+    Who gives the lilies clothing
+      Will clothe His people too;
+    Beneath the spreading heavens
+      No creature but is fed;
+    And He who feeds the ravens
+      Will give His children bread.
+
+    "Though vine nor fig-tree either
+      Their wonted fruit should bear,
+    Though all the fields should wither
+      Nor flocks nor herds be there;
+    Yet God the same abiding,
+      His praise shall tune my voice;
+    For while in Him confiding
+      I cannot but rejoice."
+
+The husband looks up in amazement, and says: "Well, well, you are the
+greatest woman I ever saw. I thought you would faint dead away when I
+told you." And as he looks at her, all the glories of physiognomy in
+the court of Louis XV. on the modern fashion plates are tame as
+compared with the superhuman splendors of that woman's face. Joan of
+Arc, Mary Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the enchantment of the
+court of Charles II., are nowhere.
+
+
+A WIFE'S DEATH.
+
+There is another time when the plainest wife is a queen of beauty to
+her husband. She has done the work of life. She has reared her
+children for God and heaven, and though some of them may be a little
+wild they will yet come back, for God has promised. She is dying, and
+her husband stands by. They think over all the years of their
+companionship, the weddings and the burials, the ups and the downs,
+the successes and the failures. They talk over the goodness of God and
+His faithfulness to children's children. She has no fear about going.
+The Lord has sustained her so many years she would not dare to
+distrust Him now. The lips of both of them tremble as they say
+good-bye and encourage each other about an early meeting in a better
+world. The breath is feebler and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of
+it? Just hold that mirror at the mouth, and see if there is any vapor
+gathering on the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors takes the old
+man by the arm and gently says: "Come, you had better go into the next
+room and rest," he says: "Wait a moment; I must take one more look at
+that face and at those hands!" Beautiful! Beautiful!
+
+My friends, I hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal
+sunset. That is a crystalline river pouring into a crystal sea. That
+is the solo of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus. That is a
+queen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at
+eighty-two, seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your
+father and mother went. I wonder if we shall die as well?
+
+
+
+
+THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.
+
+    "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the
+    house of her husband."--RUTH 1:9.
+
+
+This was the prayer of pious Naomi for Ruth and Orpah, and is an
+appropriate prayer now in behalf of unmarried womanhood. Naomi, the
+good old soul, knew that the devil would take their cases in hand if
+God did not, so she prays: "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest,
+each of you in the house of her husband."
+
+In this series of sermons on "The Wedding Ring" I last Sabbath gave
+prayerful and Christian advice to men in regard to the selection of a
+wife, and to-day I give the same prayerful and Christian advice to
+women in regard to the selection of a husband, but in all these
+sermons saying much that I hope will be appropriate for all ages and
+all classes.
+
+
+VOLUNTARY CELIBACY.
+
+I applaud the celibacy of a multitude of women who, rather than make
+unfit selection, have made none at all. It has not been a lack of
+opportunity for marital contract on their part, but their own culture
+and refinement, and their exalted idea as to what a husband ought to
+be, have caused their declinature. They have seen so many women marry
+imbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or life-time incapables, or
+magnificent nothings, or men who before marriage were angelic and
+afterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and stood back. They
+saw so many boats go into the maelstrom that they steered into other
+waters. Better for a woman to live alone, though she live a thousand
+years, than to be annexed to one of these masculine failures with
+which society is surfeited. The patron saint of almost every family
+circle is some such unmarried woman, and among all the families of
+cousins she moves around, and her coming in each house is the morning,
+and her going away is the night.
+
+
+A BENEFICENT SPINSTERHOOD.
+
+In my large circle of kindred, perhaps twenty families in all, it was
+an Aunt Phoebe. Paul gave a letter of introduction to one whom he
+calls "Phoebe, our sister," as she went up from Cenchrea to Rome,
+commending her for her kindness and Christian service, and imploring
+for her all courtesies. I think Aunt Phoebe was named after her. Was
+there a sickness in any of the households, she was there ready to sit
+up and count out the drops of medicine. Was there a marriage, she
+helped deck the bride for the altar. Was there a new soul incarnated,
+she was there to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement
+she was there to console. The children, rushed out at her first
+appearance, crying, "Here comes Aunt Phoebe," and but for parental
+interference they would have pulled her down with their caresses--for
+she was not very strong, and many severe illnesses had given her
+enough glimpses of the next world to make her heavenly-minded. Her
+table was loaded up with Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Doddridge's "Rise
+and Progress," and Jay's "Morning and Evening Exercises," and John
+Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and like books, which have fitted out
+whole generations for the heaven upon which they have already entered.
+
+
+A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN.
+
+"De Witt," she said to me one day, "twice in my life I have been so
+overwhelmed with the love of God that I fainted away and could hardly
+be resuscitated. Don't tell me there is no heaven. I have seen it
+twice." If you would know how her presence would soothe an anxiety, or
+lift a burden, or cheer a sorrow, or leave a blessing on every room in
+the house, ask any of the Talmages. She had tarried at her early home,
+taking care of an invalid father, until the bloom of life had
+somewhat faded; but she could interest the young folks with some
+three or four tender passages in her own history, so that we all knew
+that it was not through lack of opportunity that she was not the queen
+of one household, instead of being a benediction on a whole circle of
+households.
+
+At about seventy years of age she made her last visit to my house, and
+when she sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her
+presence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I
+had got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole
+alphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went
+out of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in
+heaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest
+gallery! I saw the other day in the village cemetery of Somerville,
+N.J., her resting-place, the tombstone having on it the words which
+thirty years ago she told me she would like to have inscribed there,
+namely: "The Morning Cometh."
+
+
+ILLUSTRIOUS SPINSTERS.
+
+Had she a mission in the world? Certainly. As much as Caroline
+Herschel, first amanuensis for her illustrious brother, and then his
+assistant in astronomical calculations, and then discovering worlds
+for herself, dying at ninety-eight years of age, still busy with the
+stars till she sped beyond them; as much as had Florence Nightingale,
+the nurse of the Crimea; or Grace Darling, the oarswoman of the Long
+Stone Lighthouse; or Mary Lyon, the teacher of Mount Holyoke Female
+Seminary; or Hannah More, the Christian authoress of England; or
+Dorothea Dix, the angel of mercy for the insane; or Anna Etheridge,
+among the wounded of Blackburn's Fort; or Margaret Breckenridge, at
+Vicksburg; or Mary Shelton, distributing roses and grapes and cologne
+in western hospital; or thousands of other glorious women like them,
+who never took the marriage sacrament. Appreciate all this, my sister,
+and it will make you deliberate before you rush out of the single
+state into another, unless you are sure of betterment.
+
+
+A DIFFICULT BUSINESS.
+
+Deliberate and pray. Pray and deliberate. As I showed you in my former
+sermon, a man ought to supplicate Divine guidance in such a crisis;
+how much more important that you solicit it! It is easier for a man to
+find an appropriate wife than for a woman to find a good husband. This
+is a matter of arithmetic, as I showed in former discourse. Statistics
+show that in Massachusetts and New York States women have a majority
+of hundreds of thousands. Why this is we leave others to surmise. It
+would seem that woman is a favorite with the Lord, and that therefore
+He has made more of that kind. From the order of the creation in
+paradise it is evident that woman is an improved edition of man. But
+whatever be the reason for it, the fact is certain that she who
+selects a husband has a smaller number of people to select from than
+he who selects a wife. Therefore a woman ought to be especially
+careful in her choice of life-time companionship. She cannot afford to
+make a mistake. If a man err in his selection he can spend his
+evenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities by tobacco-smoke; but
+woman has no club-room for refuge, and would find it difficult to
+habituate herself to cigars. If a woman make a bad job of marital
+selection, the probability is that nothing but a funeral can relieve
+it. Divorce cases in court may interest the public, but the
+love-letters of a married couple are poor reading, except for those
+who write them. Pray God that you be delivered from irrevocable
+mistake!
+
+
+PARTNERS TO AVOID.
+
+Avoid affiance with a despiser of the Christian religion, whatever
+else he may have or may not have. I do not say he must needs be a
+religious man, for Paul says the unbelieving husband is sanctified by
+the wife; but marriage with a man who hates the Christian religion
+will insure you a life of wretchedness. He will caricature your habit
+of kneeling in prayer. He will speak depreciatingly of Christ. He will
+wound all the most sacred feelings of your soul. He will put your home
+under the anathema of the Lord God Almighty. In addition to the
+anguish with which he will fill your life, there is great danger that
+he will despoil your hope of heaven, and make your marriage relation
+an infinite and eternal disaster. If you have made such engagement,
+your first duty is to break it. My word may come just in time to save
+your soul.
+
+
+HUSBANDS SELDOM REFORM.
+
+Further, do not unite in marriage with a man of bad habits in the idea
+of reforming him. If now, under the restraint of your present
+acquaintance, he will not give up his bad habits, after he has won the
+prize you cannot expect him to do so. You might as well plant a violet
+in the face of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing it. You
+might as well run a schooner alongside of a burning ship with the idea
+of saving the ship. The consequence will be, schooner and ship will be
+destroyed together.
+
+The almshouse could tell the story of a hundred women who married men
+to reform them. If by twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled
+by intoxicants, he is under such headway that your attempt to stop him
+would be very much like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to
+stop a Hudson River express train. What you call an inebriate nowadays
+is not a victim to wine or whiskey, but to logwood and strychnine and
+nux vomica. All these poisons have kindled their fires in his tongue
+and brain, and all the tears of a wife weeping cannot extinguish the
+flames. Instead of marrying a man to reform him, let him reform first,
+and then give him time to see whether the reform is to be permanent.
+Let him understand that if he cannot do without his bad habits for two
+years he must do without you forever.
+
+
+MEN WEDDED TO THE WORLD.
+
+Avoid union with one supremely selfish, or so wound up in his
+occupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a
+man who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is
+no room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the
+scissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made
+to cut his way through life alone, or a file full of roughness, made
+to be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His
+disposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so
+married to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other
+bride is a case of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their
+literary work as was Chatterton, whose essay was not printed because
+of the death of the Lord Mayor. Chatterton made out the following
+account: "Lost by the Lord Mayor's death in this essay one pound
+eleven shillings and six-pence. Gained in elegies and essays five
+pounds and five shillings." Then he put what he had gained by the Lord
+Mayor's death opposite to what he had lost, and wrote under it: "And
+glad he is dead by three pounds thirteen shillings and six-pence."
+When a man is as hopelessly literary as that he ought to be a
+perpetual celibate; his library, his laboratory, his books are all the
+companionship needed.
+
+Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not
+patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole,
+Gibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would
+have helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,
+and given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's
+overtasked brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and
+Gibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean Swift did not deserve a
+wife, from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,
+and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all "Vanessa." The great wit
+of the day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties.
+
+
+PREDESTINATION IN MARRIAGE.
+
+Amid so many possibilities of fatal mistake, am I not right in urging
+you to seek the unerring wisdom of God, and before you are infatuated?
+Because most marriages are fit to be made convinces us that they are
+divinely arranged. Almost every cradle has an affinity toward some
+other cradle. They may be on the opposite sides of the earth, but one
+child gets out of this cradle, and another child gets out of that
+cradle, and with their first steps they start for each other. They may
+diverge from the straight path, going toward the North, or South, or
+East, or West. They may fall down, but the two rise facing each other.
+They are approaching all through infancy. The one all through the
+years of boyhood is going to meet the one who is coming through all
+the years of girlhood to meet him. The decision of parents as to what
+is best concerning them, and the changes of fortune, may for a time
+seem to arrest
+
+
+THE TWO JOURNEYS;
+
+but on they go. They may never have seen each other. But the two
+pilgrims who started at the two cradles are nearing. After eighteen,
+twenty, or thirty years, the two come within sight. At the first
+glance they may feel a dislike, and they may slacken their step; yet
+something that the world calls fate, and that religion calls
+Providence, urges them on and on. They must meet. They come near
+enough to join hands in social acquaintance, after awhile to join
+hands in friendship, after awhile to join hearts. The delegate from
+the one cradle comes up the east aisle of the church with her father.
+The delegate from the other cradle comes up the west aisle of the
+church. The two long journeys end at the snow-drift of the bridal
+veil. The two chains made out of many years are forged together by the
+golden link which the groom puts upon the third finger of the left
+hand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!
+
+But there are so many exceptions to the general rule of natural
+affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead
+them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are
+thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women
+leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle
+than that in America--women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of
+a living husband.
+
+
+THE ADVERTISING BRUTE.
+
+Avoid all proposed alliances through newspaper advertisements. Many
+women, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been
+led on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who
+write such advertisements are villains and lepers--all, without a
+single exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will
+tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage
+at a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.
+Put your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion, to see if he will bite.
+Take a glassful of Paris green mixed with some delightful henbane.
+These are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper
+advertisements for a wife.
+
+
+MARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.
+
+My advice is: Marry a man who is a fortune in himself. Houses, lands,
+and large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns
+so rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years may
+be gone. There are some things, however, that are a perpetual
+fortune--good manners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence,
+sympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole-heartedness.
+Marry such a one and you have married a fortune, whether he have an
+income now of $50,000 a year or an income of $1000. A bank is secure
+according to its capital stock, and not to be judged by the deposits
+for a day or a week. A man is rich according to his sterling
+qualities, and not according to the mutability of circumstances, which
+may leave with him a large amount of resources to-day and withdraw
+them to-morrow. If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor indeed.
+If a man have upright character he is rich. Property may come and go,
+he is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy him out, nothing can
+sell him out. He may have more money one year than another, but his
+better fortunes never vacillate.
+
+
+AVOID PERFECT MEN.
+
+Yet do not expect to find a perfect man. If you find one without any
+faults, incapable of mistakes, never having guessed wrongly, his
+patience never having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in temper,
+in habits, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle.
+What would you do with a perfect man who are not perfect yourself? And
+how dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural
+excellence? What a companion you would make for an angel! In other
+words, there are no perfect men. There never was but one perfect pair,
+and they slipped down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally
+find a man who says he never sins. _We know he lies_ when he says it.
+We have had financial dealings with two or three perfect men, and they
+cheated us wofully. Do not, therefore, look for an immaculate husband,
+for you will not find him.
+
+
+PLENTY OF GOOD HUSBANDS.
+
+But do not become cynical on this subject. Society has a great
+multitude of grand men who know how to make home happy. When they come
+to be husbands they evince a nobility of nature and a self-sacrificing
+spirit that surprise even the wife. These are the men who cheerfully
+sit in dark and dirty business offices, ten feet by twelve, in summer
+time hard at work while the wives and daughters are off at Saratoga,
+Mount Desert, or the White Sulphur. These are the men who, never
+having had much education themselves, have their sons at Yale, and
+Harvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work
+themselves to death by fifty years of age, and go out to Greenwood
+leaving large estate and generous life-insurance provision for their
+families.
+
+There are husbands and fathers here by the hundreds who would die for
+their households. If outlawry should ever become dominant in our
+cities they would stand in their doorway, and with their own arm would
+cleave down, one by one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot,
+and every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an army in defence
+in a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is
+not so much the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and
+children, and home that turns enthusiasm into a fury. The world has
+such men by the million, and the homunculi that infest all our
+communities must not hinder women from appreciating the glory of true
+manhood.
+
+
+FIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.
+
+I was reading of a bridal reception. The young man had brought home
+the choice of his heart in her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she
+stood in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group, the young man's
+eyes filled with tears of joy as he thought that she was his. Years
+passed by, and they stood at the same parlor on another festal
+occasion. She wore the same dress, for business had not opened as
+brightly to the young husband as he expected, and he had never been
+able to purchase for her another dress. Her face was not as bright and
+smooth as it had been years before, and a careworn look had made its
+signature on her countenance. As the husband looked at her he saw the
+difference between this occasion and the former, and he went over to
+where she sat, and said: "You remember the time when we were here
+before. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat
+changed, but you look to me far more beautiful than you did then."
+There is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and many of you know it in
+your own homes.
+
+But, after all the good advice we may give you, we come back to the
+golden pillar from which we started, the tremendous truth that no one
+but God can guide you in safety about this matter that may decide your
+happiness for two worlds, this and the next. So, my sister, I put your
+case where Naomi put that of Ruth and Orpah when she said: "The Lord
+grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her
+husband."
+
+
+THE WEDDING.
+
+I imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There
+is much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an
+undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the
+gladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives,
+but when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is
+preparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its
+wings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and
+at the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you
+think it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with
+brightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To
+have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood
+to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an
+anxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and
+then have her go away to some other home--aye, all the redolence of
+orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the
+rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious
+congratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are
+suffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you
+have a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or
+thirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and,
+suppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, "Good-bye."
+
+
+VISIT THE OLD HOME.
+
+I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write
+often home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose
+their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and
+stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place
+after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on
+father's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you
+will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day
+one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile
+the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to
+yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are
+faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the
+first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted
+than you ever can be to any one else except to God--I mean your father
+and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:
+
+    "Me let the tender office long engage
+    To rock the cradle of reposing age;
+    With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
+    Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
+    Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
+    And keep awhile one parent from the sky."
+
+And now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood
+before me to-day to the God "who setteth the solitary in families."
+
+
+
+
+CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.
+
+    "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
+    But he knoweth not that the dead are there."--PROVERBS 9:17, 18.
+
+
+The Garden of Eden was a great orchard of fruit-bearing trees, bushels
+and bushels of round, ripe, glorious fruit; but the horticulturist and
+his wife having it in charge hankered for one special tree, simply
+because it was forbidden, starting a bad streak in human nature, so
+that children will now sometimes do something simply because they are
+forbidden to do it. This
+
+
+KINK IN THE HUMAN RACE
+
+is not easily unsnarled. Tell a company that they may look into any
+twenty rooms of a large house except one, and their chief desire is to
+see that one, though all the others were picture-galleries and that a
+garret. If there were in a region of mineral springs twenty fountains,
+but the proprietor had fenced in one well against the public, the one
+fenced in would be the chief temptation to the visitors, and they
+would rather taste of that than of the other nineteen. Solomon
+recognized this principle in the text, and also the disaster that
+follows forbidden conduct, when he said: "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."
+
+In this course of sermons on "The Wedding Ring," I this morning aim a
+point-blank shot at "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades."
+
+Yonder comes up through the narrows of New York harbor a ship having
+all the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to
+the top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted
+off; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and
+lee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken;
+all the pumps working to keep from sinking before they can get to
+wharfage. That ship is the institution of Christian marriage, launched
+by the Lord grandly from the banks of the Euphrates, and floating out
+on the seas for the admiration and happiness of all nations. But
+free-loveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from
+another side, and hurricanes of libertinism have struck it on all
+sides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank, and beam, and
+sail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and stanchion. In other words,
+the notions of modern society must be reconstructed on the subject of
+the marriage institution. And when we have got it back somewhere near
+what it was when God built it in Paradise, the earth will be far on
+toward resumption of Paradisaical conditions.
+
+
+DEPLORABLE LAXITY.
+
+Do you ask what is the need of a course of sermons on this subject?
+The man or woman who asks this question is either ignorant or guilty.
+In New England, which has been considered by many the most moral part
+of the United States, there are two thousand divorces per year. And in
+Massachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits, there is one divorce
+to every fourteen marriages. The State of Maine, considered by many
+almost frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred and
+seventy-eight divorces. In Vermont _swapping wives_ is not a rare
+transaction. In Connecticut there are women who boast that they have
+four or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted Protestantism
+is, on this subject, more lax than Roman Catholicism. Roman
+Catholicism admits of no divorce except for the reason that Christ
+admitted as a lawful reason. But Protestantism is admitting anything
+and everything, and the larger the proportion of Protestants in any
+part of the country, the larger the ratio of divorce. Do you not then
+think that Protestantism needs some toning up on this subject?
+
+
+GROWING POPULARITY.
+
+Aye, when you realize that the sacred and divine institution is being
+caricatured and defamed by clandestine marriages and escapades all
+over the land, does there not seem a call for such discussion? Hardly
+a morning or evening paper comes into your possession without
+reporting them, and there are fifty of these occurrences where one is
+reported, because it is the interest of all parties to hush them up.
+The victims are, all hours of the night, climbing down ladders or
+crossing over from State to State, that they may reach laws of greater
+laxity, holding reception six months after marriage to let the public
+know for the first time that a half year before they were united in
+wedlock. Ministers of religion, and justices of the peace, and mayors
+of cities, willingly joining in marriage runaways from other States
+and neighborhoods; the coach-box and the back seat of the princely
+landau in flirtation; telegrams flashing across the country for the
+arrest of absconded school misses, who started off with arm full of
+books, and taking rail trains to meet their affianced--in the
+snow-drifts of the great storm that has recently passed over the
+country some of them, I read, have perished--thousands of people in a
+marriage whose banns have never been published; precipitated
+conjugality; bigamy triumphant; marriage a joke; society blotched all
+over with a putrefaction on this subject which no one but the Almighty
+God can arrest.
+
+We admit that clandestinity and escapade are sometimes authorized and
+made right by parental tyranny or domestic serfdom. There have been
+exceptional cases where parents have had a monomania in regard to
+their sons and daughters, demanding their celibacy or forbidding
+relations every way right. Through absurd family ambition parents have
+sometimes demanded qualifications and equipment of fortune
+unreasonable to expect or simply impossible. Children are not expected
+to marry to please their parents, but to please themselves. Given good
+morals, means of a livelihood, appropriate age and quality of social
+position, and no parent has a right to prohibit a union that seems
+deliberate and a matter of the heart. Rev. Philip Henry, eminent for
+piety and good sense, used to say to his children: "Please God and
+please yourselves, and you shall never displease me."
+
+
+A MATRIMONIAL TRAGEDY.
+
+During our Civil War a marriage was about to be celebrated at
+Charleston, S.C., between Lieutenant de Rochelle and Miss Anna, the
+daughter of ex-Governor Pickens. As the ceremony was about to be
+solemnized a shell broke through the roof and wounded nine of the
+guests, and the bride fell dying, and, wrapped in her white wedding
+robe, her betrothed kneeling at her side, in two hours she expired.
+And there has been many as bright a union of hearts as that proposed
+that the bombshell of outrageous parental indignation has wounded and
+scattered and slain.
+
+If the hand offered in marriage be blotched of intemperance; if the
+life of the marital candidate has been debauched; if he has no visible
+means of support, and poverty and abandonment seem only a little way
+ahead; if the twain seem entirely unmatched in disposition, protest
+and forbid, and re-enforce your opinion by that of others, and put all
+lawful obstacles in the way; but do not join that company of parents
+who have ruined their children by a plutocracy of domestic crankiness
+which has caused more than one elopement. I know of a few cases where
+marriage has been under the red-hot anathema of parents and all the
+neighbors, but God approved, and the homes established have been
+beautiful and positively Edenic.
+
+But while we have admitted there are real cases of justifiable
+rebellion, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--yea, in nine hundred
+and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, these unlicensed departures
+and decampments by moonlight are ruin, temporal and eternal. It is
+safer for a woman to jump off the docks of the East River and depend
+on being able to swim to the other shore, or get picked up by a
+ferry-boat. The possibilities are that she may be rescued, but the
+probability is that she will not. Read the story of the escapades in
+the newspapers for the last ten years, and find me a half dozen that
+do not mean poverty, disgrace, abandonment, police court, divorce,
+death, and hell. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret
+is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there." Satan
+presides over the escapade. He introduces the two parties to each
+other. He gets them to pledge their troth. He appoints where they
+shall meet. He shows them where they can find officiating minister or
+squire. He points out to them the ticket office for the rail train. He
+puts them aboard, and when they are going at forty miles the hour he
+jumps off and leaves them in the lurch; for, while Satan has a genius
+in getting people into trouble, he has no genius for getting people
+out. He induced Jonah to take ship for Tarshish when God told him to
+go to Nineveh, but provided for the recreant prophet no better
+landing-place than the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
+
+
+THE DIME NOVEL.
+
+The modern novel is responsible for many of these abscondings. Do you
+think that young women would sit up half a night reading novels in
+which the hero and heroine get acquainted in the usual way, and carry
+on their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents,
+the day of marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding group of
+kindred the vows are taken? Oh, no! There must be flight, and pursuit,
+and narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine, and
+parental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and gorgeous. In many of the
+cases of escapade the idea was implanted in the hot brain of the woman
+by a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.
+
+
+THE SCHEME OF BAD MEN.
+
+These evasions of the ordinary modes of marriage are to be deplored
+for the reason that nearly all of them are proposed by bad men. If the
+man behave well he has a character to which he can refer, and he can
+say: "If you want to inquire about me there is a list of names of
+people in the town or neighborhood where I live." No; the heroes of
+escapades are nearly all either bigamists, or libertines, or
+drunkards, or defrauders, or first-class scoundrels of some sort. They
+have no character to lose. They may be dressed in the height of
+fashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and padded, and
+diamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye
+and intoxicate the olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts
+of villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of them. "Stolen waters
+are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not
+that the dead are there."
+
+
+SOCIAL DEGRADATION.
+
+Fugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies
+woman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was
+not of a higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there would be
+no objections, and hence no inducement to clandestinity. In almost all
+cases it means the lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a man
+marrying a woman beneath him in society may raise her to any eminence
+that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in
+society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable,
+and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can
+afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the
+American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an
+instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an
+affluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five
+dollars a day, provided he keeps very busy. Well, many a man has
+lived on five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big
+contract when with five dollars a day he attempts to support some one
+who has lived in a home that cost twenty thousand per annum. This has
+been about the history of most of such conjunctions of simplicity and
+extravagance, the marriage of
+
+
+OX AND EAGLE.
+
+The first year they get on tolerably well, for it is odd and romantic,
+and assisted by applause of people who admire outlawry. The second
+year the couple settle down into complete dislike of each other. The
+third year they separate and seek for divorce, or, as is more
+probable, the man becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened waif
+of the street. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is
+pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there."
+
+These truant marriages are also to be deplored because in most
+instances they are executed in defiance of parental wisdom and
+kindness. Most parents are anxious for the best welfare of a child. If
+they make vehement and determined opposition, it is largely because it
+is a match unfit to be made, and they can see for their daughter
+nothing but wretchedness in that direction. They have keener and wiser
+appreciation, for instance, of the certain domestic demolition that
+comes from alcoholism in a young man. They realize what an idiot a
+woman is who marries a man who has not brains or industry enough to
+earn a livelihood for a family. No bureau of statistics can tell us
+the number of women who, after marriage, have to support themselves
+and their husbands. If the husband becomes invalid, it is a beautiful
+thing to see a wife uncomplainingly, by needle, or pen, or yard-stick,
+or washing-machine, support the home. But these great, lazy masculine
+louts that stand around with hands in their pockets, allowing the wife
+with her weak arm to fight the battle of bread, need to be
+regurgitated from society.
+
+
+REVERSED RELATIONS.
+
+There are innumerable instances in these cities where the wife pays
+the rent, and meets all the family expenses, and furnishes the tobacco
+and the beer for the lord of the household. No wonder parents put on
+all the brakes to stop such a train of disaster. They have too often
+seen the gold ring put on the finger at the altar turning out to be
+the iron link of a chain of domestic servitude. What a farce it is for
+a man who cannot support himself, and not worth a cent in the world,
+to take a ring which he purchased by money stolen from his
+grandmother's cupboard, and put it on the finger of the bride, saying:
+"With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
+endow."
+
+It is amazing to see how some women will marry men knowing nothing
+about them. No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods
+on credit without knowing whether the customer was worthy of being
+trusted. No man or woman would buy a house with encumbrances of
+mortgages, and liens, and judgments against it uncancelled; and yet
+there is not an hour of the day or night for the last ten years there
+have not been women by hasty marriage entrusting their earthly
+happiness to men about whose honesty they know nothing, or who are
+encumbered with liens, and judgments, and first mortgages, and second
+mortgages, and third mortgages of evil habits. No wonder that in such
+circumstances parents in conjugating the verb in question pass from
+the subjunctive mood to the indicative, and from the indicative to the
+imperative. In nearly all the cases of escapade that you will hear of
+the rest of your lives there will be a headlong leap over the barriers
+of parental common sense and forethought. "Stolen waters are sweet,
+and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the
+dead are there."
+
+
+INVOLVES DECEPTION.
+
+We also deplore these fraudulent espousals and this sneaking exchange
+of single life for married life because it is deception, and that is a
+corroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must
+deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot
+deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures
+ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be
+decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto,
+change! Now you see her, and now you don't."
+
+Better to wait for years for circumstances to improve. Time may remove
+all obstacles. The candidate for marital preferences may change his
+habits, or get into some trade or business that will support a home,
+or the inexorable father and mother may be promoted to celestial
+citizenship. At the right time have the day appointed. Stand at the
+end of the best room in the house with joined hands, and minister of
+religion before you to challenge the world that "if they know of any
+reason why these two persons shall not be united, they state it now or
+forever hold their peace," and then start out with the good wishes of
+all the neighbors and the halo of the Divine sanction. When you can go
+out of harbor at noon with all flags flying, do not try to run a
+blockade at midnight.
+
+In view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine
+correspondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine
+meetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of
+mutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters
+come for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no
+correspondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open
+your letters. Do not employ terms of endearment at the beginning and
+close of letters unless you have a right to use them. That young lady
+is on the edge of danger who dares not allow her mother to see her
+letters.
+
+
+CONFIDE IN PARENTS.
+
+If you have sensible parents take them into your confidence in all the
+affairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour
+than you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have
+toiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your
+best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their
+opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition
+is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim,
+or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and
+trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister
+of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things.
+One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr.
+Pitt inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his
+daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.
+Pitt said: "Is the young man of respectable family?" "Yes." "Is he
+respectable in himself?" "Yes." "Has he an estimable character?"
+"Yes." "Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition." The advice
+was taken, and a happy married life ensued. Let ministers and officers
+of the law decline officiating at clandestine marriages. When they are
+asked to date a marriage certificate back, as we all are asked, let
+them peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony was in November
+instead of January, or decline to leave the date blank, lest others
+fill out the record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all our
+States, as it has already been in some of the States, making a license
+from officers of the law necessary before we can unite couples, and
+then make it necessary to publish beforehand in the newspapers, as it
+used to be published in the New England churches, so that if there be
+lawful objection it may be presented, not swinging the buoy on the
+rocks after the ship has struck and gone to pieces.
+
+And here it might be well for me to take all the romance out of an
+escapade by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the great Scotch
+poet, where he describes the crazed victim of one of these escapades:
+
+                "... Yet had she many days
+    Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.
+    She lived on alms, and carried in her hand
+    Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring.
+    When any asked the cause she smiled, and said
+    They were her sisters, and would come and watch
+    Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke
+    Of her deceiver, father, mother, home,
+    Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still
+    In lonely places walked, and ever gazed
+    Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;
+    Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,
+    With woe too wide to see beyond, she died."
+
+
+UNDER THE LIGHT.
+
+But now I turn on this subject an intenser light. We have fifteen
+hundred lights in this church, and when by electric touch they are
+kindled in the evening service it is almost startling. But this whole
+subject of "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades" I put under a more
+intense light than that. The headlight of a locomotive is terrible if
+you stand near enough to catch the full glare of it. As it sweeps
+around the "Horseshoe Curve" of the Alleghanies or along the edges of
+the Sierra Nevadas, how far ahead, and how deep down, and how high up
+it flashes, and there is instantaneous revelation of mountain peak and
+wild beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a thousand
+feet tall, or clinging in white terror to the precipices! But more
+intense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous
+is the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the
+most hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I
+quote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole
+emphasis on the word "secret." "God shall bring every work into
+judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil."
+
+What a time that will be in which the cover shall be lifted from every
+home and from every heart. The iniquity may have been so sly that it
+escaped all human detection, but it will be as well known on that day
+as the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, unless for Christ's sake it has
+been forgiven. All the fingers of universal condemnation will be
+pointed at it. The archangel of wrath will stand there with uplifted
+thunderbolt ready to strike it. The squeamishness and prudery of
+earthly society, which hardly allowed some sins to be mentioned on
+earth, are past, and the man who was unclean and the woman who was
+impure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns,
+stand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek,
+and hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping
+with fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and
+infernal voices crying, "Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!"
+
+All marital intrigues and all secret iniquities will be published, as
+though all the trumpets spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized
+them, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. Oh, man, recreant to thy
+marriage vow! Oh, woman, in sinful collusion! What, then, will become
+of thy poor soul? The tumbling Alps, and Pyrenees, and Mount
+Washingtons cannot hide thee from the consequences of thy secret sins.
+Better repent of them now, so that they cannot be brought against
+thee. For the chief of sinners there is pardon, if you ask it in time.
+But I leave you to guess what chance there will be for those who on
+earth lived in clandestine relations, when on that day the very Christ
+who had such high appreciation of the marriage relation that He
+compared it to His own relation with the Church, shall appear at the
+door of the great hall of the Last Assize, and all the multitudes of
+earth, and hell, and heaven shall rise up and cry out from the three
+galleries: "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!"
+
+
+
+
+DUTIES OF HUSBANDS TO WIVES.
+
+    "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide: and he
+    lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were
+    coming."--GENESIS 24:63.
+
+
+A bridal pageant on the back of dromedaries! The camel is called the
+ship of the desert. Its swinging motion in the distance is suggestive
+of a vessel rising and falling with the billows. Though awkward, how
+imposing these creatures as they move along, whether in ancient or
+modern times, sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand
+travelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora to Damascus! In my
+text comes a caravan. We notice the noiseless step of the broad foot,
+the velocity of motion, the gay caparison of saddle, and girth, and
+awning, sheltering the riders from the sun, and the hilarity of the
+mounted passengers, and we cry out: "Who are they?" Well, Isaac has
+been praying for a wife, and it is time he had one, for he is forty
+years of age; and his servant, directed by the Lord, has made a
+selection of Rebekah; and, with her companions and maidens, she is on
+her way to her new home, carrying with her the blessing of all her
+friends.
+
+
+THE NUPTIAL MEETING.
+
+Isaac is in the fields, meditating upon his proposed passage from
+celibacy to monogamy. And he sees a speck against the sky, then groups
+of people, and after a while he finds that the grandest earthly
+blessing that ever comes to a man is approaching with this gay
+caravan.
+
+In this my discourse on "The Wedding Ring," having spoken of the
+choice of a lifetime companion, I take it for granted, O man, that
+your marriage was divinely arranged, and that the camels have arrived
+from the right direction and at the right time, bringing the one that
+was intended for your consort--a Rebekah and not a Jezebel. I proceed
+to discuss as to how you ought to treat your wife, and my ambition is
+to tell you more plain truth than you ever heard in any three-quarters
+of an hour in all your life.
+
+
+THE RESPONSIBILITY UNDERTAKEN.
+
+First of all, I charge you realize your responsibility in having taken
+her from the custody and care and homestead in which she was once
+sheltered. What courage you must have had, and what confidence in
+yourself, to say to her practically: "I will be to you more than your
+father and mother, more than all the friends you ever had or ever can
+have! Give up everything and take me. I feel competent to see you
+through life in safety. You are an immortal being, but I am competent
+to defend you and make you happy. However bright and comfortable a
+home you have now, and though in one of the rooms is the arm-chair in
+which you rocked, and in the garret is the cradle in which you were
+hushed and the trundle-bed in which you slept, and in the sitting-room
+are the father and mother who have got wrinkle-faced, and
+stoop-shouldered, and dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you
+will do better to come with me." I am amazed that any of us ever had
+the sublimity of impudence to ask such a transfer from a home assured
+to a home conjectured and unbuilt.
+
+
+A RISKY VOYAGE.
+
+You would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should
+go down to one of the piers on the North River, and at a time when
+there was a great lack of ship captains, and I should, with no
+knowledge of navigation, propose to take a steamer across to Glasgow
+or Havre, and say: "All aboard! Haul in the planks and swing out,"
+and, passing out into the sea, plunge through darkness and storm. If I
+succeeded in getting charge of a ship, it would be one that would
+never be heard of again. But that is the boldness of every man that
+proffers marriage. He says: "I will navigate you through the storms,
+the cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of rocks and
+icebergs. I have no experience and I have no seaport, but all aboard
+for the voyage of a lifetime! I admit that there have been ten
+thousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't hesitate! Tut! Tut!
+There now! Don't cry! Brides must not cry at the wedding."
+
+
+THE WIFE'S TEMERITY.
+
+In response to this the woman, by her action, practically says: "I
+have but one life to live, and I entrust it all to you. My arm is
+weak, but I will depend on the strength of yours. I don't know much of
+the world, but I rely on your wisdom. I put my body, my mind, my soul,
+my time, my eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve. Even my name
+I resign and take yours, though mine is a name that suggests all that
+was honorable in my father, and all that was good in my mother, and
+all that was pleasant in my brothers and sisters. I start with you on
+a journey which shall not part except at the edge of your grave or
+mine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than
+I make, when I take her tremendous words, the pathos of which many
+centuries have not cooled:
+
+Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee;
+for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will
+lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou
+diest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and
+more also, if aught but death part thee and me.' Side by side in life.
+Side by side in the burying-ground. Side by side in heaven. Before God
+and man, and with my immortal soul in the oath, I swear eternal
+fidelity."
+
+
+ENTITLED TO ADMIRATION.
+
+Now, my brother, how ought you to treat her? Unless you are an ingrate
+infinite you will treat her well. You will treat her better than any
+one in the universe except your God. Her name will have in it more
+music than in all that Chopin, or Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her
+eyes, swollen with three weeks of night watching over a child with
+scarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May morning. After the
+last rose petal has dropped out of her cheek, after the last feather
+of the raven's wing has fallen from her hair, after across her
+forehead, and under her eyes, and across her face there are as many
+wrinkles as there are graves over which she has wept, you will be able
+truthfully to say, in the words of Solomon's song: "Behold, thou art
+fair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!" And perhaps she may respond
+appropriately in the words that no one but the matchless Robert Burns
+could ever have found pen or ink, or heart or brain to write:
+
+    "John Anderson, my jo, John,
+      We clamb the hill thegither;
+    And mony a canty day, John,
+      We've had wi' ane anither.
+    Now we maun totter down, John,
+      But hand in hand we'll go;
+    And sleep thegither at the foot,
+      John Anderson, my jo."
+
+If any one assail her good name, you will have hard work to control
+your temper, and if you should strike him down the sin will not be
+unpardonable. By as complete a surrender as the universe ever
+saw--except that of the Son of God for your salvation and mine--she
+has a first mortgage on your body, mind and soul, and the mortgage is
+foreclosed; and you do not more thoroughly own your two eyes or your
+two hands than she owns you. The longer the journey Rebekah makes and
+the greater the risks of her expedition on the back of the camels, the
+more thoroughly is Isaac bound to be kind, and indulgent, and worthy.
+
+
+LOVERS' PROMISES BINDING.
+
+Now, be honest and pay your debts. You promised to make her happy. Are
+you making her happy? You are an honest man in other things, and feel
+the importance of keeping a contract. If you have induced her into a
+conjugal partnership under certain pledges of kindness and valuable
+attention, and then have failed to fulfill your word, you deserve to
+have a suit brought against you for getting goods under false
+pretences, and then you ought to be mulcted in a large amount of
+damages. Review now all the fine, beautiful, complimentary, gracious
+and glorious things you promised her before marriage and reflect
+whether you have kept your faith. Do you say, "Oh, that was all
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke," and that "they all talk that
+way!" Well, let that plan be tried on yourself! Suppose I am
+interested in Western lands, and I fill your mind with roseate
+speculation, and I tell you that a city is already laid out on the
+farm that I propose to sell you, and that a new railroad will run
+close by, and have a depot for easy transportation of the crops, and
+that eight or ten capitalists are going to put up fine residences
+close by, and that the climate is delicious, and that the ground, high
+up, gives no room for malaria, and that every dollar planted will grow
+up into a bush bearing ten or twenty dollars, and my speech glows with
+enthusiasm until you rush off with me to an attorney to have the deed
+drawn, and the money paid down, and the bargain completed. You can
+hardly sleep nights because of the El Dorado, the Elysium, upon which
+you are soon to enter.
+
+
+A WESTERN EDEN.
+
+You give up your home at the East, you bid good-bye to your old
+neighbors, and take the train, and after many days' journey you arrive
+at a quiet depot, from which you take a wagon thirty miles through the
+wilderness, and reach your new place. You see a man seated on a wet
+log, in a swamp, and shaking with the fifteenth attack of chills and
+fever, and ask him who he is. He says: "I am a real estate agent,
+having in charge the property around here." You ask him where the new
+depot is. He tells you that it has not yet been built, but no doubt
+will be if the company get their bill for the track through the next
+legislature. You ask him where the new city is laid out. He says, with
+chattering teeth: "If you will wait till this chill is off, I will
+show it to you on the map I have in my pocket." You ask him where the
+capitalists are going to build their fine houses, and he says:
+"Somewhere along those lowlands out there by those woods, when the
+water has been drained off." That night you sleep in the hut of the
+real estate agent, and though you pray for everybody else, you do not
+pray for me. Being more fortunate than many men who go out in such
+circumstances, you have money enough to get back, and you come to me,
+and out of breath in your indignation, you say: "You have swindled me
+out of everything. What do you mean in deceiving me about that Western
+property?" "Oh," I reply, "that was all right; that was
+sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke. That's the way they all
+talk!"
+
+But more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who
+by glow of words and personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into
+surroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that
+she exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married
+experience--treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and
+godless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a
+farm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of a lifetime.
+
+
+LOVERS' ATTENTIONS.
+
+My brother, do not get mad at what I say, but honestly compare the
+promises you made, and see whether you have kept them. Some of you
+spent every evening of the week with your betrothed before marriage,
+and since then you spent every evening away, except you have influenza
+or some sickness on account of which the doctor says you must not go
+out. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of
+adulation, and now you think it sounds silly to praise the one who
+ought to be more attractive to you as the years go by, and life grows
+in severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of
+tears--tears over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way some of
+you used to come in the house in the evening, when you were attempting
+the capture of her affections, and the way some of you come into the
+house in the evening now.
+
+
+DON'T BE PREOCCUPIED.
+
+Then what politeness, what distillation of smiles, what graciousness,
+sweet as the peach orchard in blossom week! Now, some of you come in
+and put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say: "Lost money to-day!"
+and you sit down at the table and criticise the way the food is
+cooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch
+up the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in
+that home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic
+autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with
+healthful curiosity, yet they must ask no questions. The wife has had
+enough annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen to fill her
+nerves with nettles and spikes. As you have provided the money for
+food and wardrobe, you feel you have done all required of you. Toward
+the good cheer, and the intelligent improvement, and the moral
+entertainment of that home, which at the longest can last but a few
+years, you are doing nothing. You seem to have no realization of the
+fact that soon these children will be grown up or in their sepulchres,
+and will be far removed from your influence, and that the wife will
+soon end her earthly mission, and that house will be occupied by
+others, and you yourself will be gone.
+
+Gentlemen, fulfill your contracts. Christian marriage is an affectional
+bargain. In heathen lands a man wins his wife by achievements. In some
+countries wives are bought by the payment of so many dollars, as so many
+cattle or sheep. In one country the man gets on a horse and rides down
+where a group of women are standing, and seizes one of them by the hair,
+and lifts her, struggling and resisting, on his horse, and if her
+brothers and friends do not overtake her before she gets to the jungle,
+she is his lawful wife. In another land the masculine candidate for
+marriage is beaten by the club of the one whom he would make his bride.
+If he cries out under the pounding, he is rejected. If he receives the
+blows uncomplainingly, she is his by right. Endurance, and bravery, and
+skill decide the marriage in barbarous lands, but Christian marriage is
+a voluntary bargain, in which you promise protection, support,
+companionship and love.
+
+
+THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT.
+
+Business men have in their fire-proof safes a file of papers
+containing their contracts, and sometimes they take them out and read
+them over to see what the party of the first part and the party of the
+second part really bound themselves to do. Different ministers of
+religion have their own peculiar forms of marriage ceremony; but if
+you have forgotten what you promised at the altar of wedlock, you had
+better buy or borrow an Episcopal Church-Service, which contains the
+substance of all intelligent marriage ceremonies, when it says: "I
+take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day
+forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part,
+according to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my
+troth." Would it not be a good idea to have that printed in tract form
+and widely distributed?
+
+
+NEVER FLIRT.
+
+The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else's wives
+than to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal
+scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to
+pick up some other lady's pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which
+I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men--namely,
+husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own
+wives they bestow upon others. They smile on them coyly and askance,
+and with a manner that seems to say: "I wish I was free from that old
+drudge at home. What an improvement you would be on my present
+surroundings!" And bouquets are sent, and accidental meetings take
+place, and late at night the man comes to his prosaic home, whistling
+and hilarious, and wonders that the wife is jealous. There are
+thousands of men who, while not positively immoral, need radical
+correction of their habits in this direction. It is meanness
+immeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife:
+"You can't help yourself, and I will go where I please, and admire
+whom I please, and I defy your criticism."
+
+Why did you not have that put in the bond, O domestic Shylock? Why did
+you not have it understood before you were pronounced husband and wife
+that she should have only a part of the dividend of your affections;
+that when, as time rolled on and the cares of life had erased some of
+the bright lines from her face, and given unwieldiness to her form,
+you would have the reserved right to pay obeisance to cheeks more
+rubicund, and figure lither and more agile, and as you demanded the
+last pound of patience and endurance on her part you could, with the
+emphasis of an Edwin Forrest or a Macready, have tapped the eccentric
+marriage document and have said: "It's in the bond!" If this modern
+Rebekah had understood beforehand where she was alighting she would
+have ordered the camel drivers to turn the caravan backward toward
+Padan-aram. Flirtation has its origin either in dishonesty or
+licentiousness. The married man who indulges in it is either a fraud
+or a rake. However high up in society such a one may be, and however
+sought after, I would not give a three-cent piece, though it had been
+three times clipped, for the virtue of the masculine flirt.
+
+
+TONE UP.
+
+The most worthy thing for the thousands of married men to do is to go
+home and apologize for past neglects and brighten up their old love.
+Take up the family Bible and read the record of the marriage day. Open
+the drawer of relics in the box inside the drawer containing the
+trinkets of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellow-colored
+letters that were written before you became one. Rehearse the scenes
+of joy and sorrow in which you have mingled. Put all these things as
+fuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fire rekindle the
+extinguished light. It was a blast from hell that blew it out, and a
+gale from heaven will fan it into a blaze.
+
+Ye who have broken marriage vows, speak out! take your wife into all
+your plans, your successes, your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her
+everything. Walk arm in arm with her into places of amusement, and on
+the piazza of summer watering places, and up the rugged way of life,
+and down through dark ravine, and when one trembles on the way let the
+other be re-enforcement. In no case pass yourself off as a single man,
+practicing gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of age, in
+ladies' society, try to look young-mannish.
+
+
+RESPECT HER PIETY.
+
+Interfere not with your wife's religious nature. Put her not in that
+awful dilemma in which so many Christian wives are placed by their
+husbands, who ask them to go to places or do things which compel them
+to decide between loyalty to God and loyalty to the husband. Rather
+than ask her to compromise her Christian character encourage her to be
+more and more a Christian, for there will be times in your life when
+you will want the help of all her Christian resources; and certainly,
+when you remember how much influence your mother had over you, you do
+not want the mother of your children to set a less gracious example.
+It pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and worldly husband say
+about his wife, with no idea that it will get to her ears: "There is
+the most godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual rebuke to my
+waywardness. Nothing on earth could ever induce her to do a wrong
+thing. I hope the children will take after her instead of after me. If
+there is any heaven at all I am sure she will go there."
+
+
+THE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
+
+Ay, my brother, do you not think it would be a wise and a safe thing
+for you to join her on the road to heaven? You think you have a happy
+home now, but what a home you would have if you both were religious!
+What a new sacredness it would give to your marital relation, and what
+a new light it would throw on the forehead of your children! In
+sickness, what a comfort! In reverses of fortune, what a wealth! In
+death, what a triumph! God meant you to be the high priest of your
+household. Go home to-day and take the Bible on your lap, and gather
+all your family yet living around you, and those not living will hear
+of it in a flash, and as ministering spirits will hover--father and
+mother and children gone, and all your celestial kindred. Then kneel
+down, and if you can't think of a prayer to offer I will give you a
+prayer--namely: "Lord God, I surrender to Thee myself and my beloved
+wife, and these dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the past
+and help us for all the future. We have lived together here, may we
+live together forever. Amen and amen." Dear me, what a stir it would
+make among your best friends on earth and in heaven.
+
+
+A HUSBAND IMPRISONED.
+
+Joseph the Second, the Emperor, was so kind and so philanthropic that
+he excited the unbounded love of most of his subjects. He abolished
+serfdom, established toleration and lived in the happiness of his
+people. One day while on his way to Ostend to declare it a free port,
+and while at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman at the
+door of her cottage in dejection. The Emperor dismounted and asked the
+cause of her grief. She said that her husband had gone to Ostend to
+see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was
+an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it
+was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose
+kindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable
+admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see him
+was simply unbearable.
+
+The Emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box decorated with diamonds
+surrounding a picture of himself and presented it to her, and when the
+picture revealed to whom she was talking she knelt in reverence and
+clapped her hands in gladness before him. The Emperor took the name of
+her husband and the probable place where he might be found at Ostend,
+and had him imprisoned for the three days of the Emperor's visit, so
+that the husband returning home found that the wife had seen the
+Emperor while he had not seen him.
+
+In many families of this earth the wife, through the converting grace
+of God, has seen the "King in His beauty," and He has conferred upon
+her the pearl of great price, while the husband is an "alien from the
+covenant of promise, without God and without hope in the world," and
+imprisoned in worldliness and sin. Oh, that they might arm in arm go
+this day and see Him, who is not only greater and lovelier than any
+Joseph of earthly dominion, but "high over all, in earth, and air, and
+sky!" His touch is life. His voice is music. His smile is heaven.
+
+
+
+
+DUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.
+
+    "The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good
+    understanding and of a beautiful countenance."--1 SAMUEL 25:3.
+
+
+The ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen snow, but the wool from
+the backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I
+hear the grinding of the iron blades together, and the bleating of the
+flocks, held between the knees of the shearers, while the clipping
+goes on, and the rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his wife
+Abigail preside over this homestead. David, the warrior, sends a
+delegation to apply for aid at this prosperous time of sheep-shearing,
+and Nabal peremptorily declines his request. Revenge is the cry.
+Yonder over the rocks come David and four hundred angry men with one
+stroke to demolish Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The
+regiment marches in double quick, and the stones of the mountain
+loosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift
+feet, and the cry of the commander is "Forward! Forward!"
+
+
+A FAIR PROPITIATOR.
+
+Abigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of
+the hill. She is armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own
+beauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the
+base of the craig, he cries: "Halt! Halt!" and the caverns echo it:
+"Halt! Halt!" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right
+mightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at
+the sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her
+prowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and
+put before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if
+she be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and
+devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.
+
+As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands
+how they ought to treat their wives--and, though I noticed that some
+of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well--I now
+take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their
+husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that
+while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you
+did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than
+overbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a
+hundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best
+man they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of a
+hundred of them would say: "At the other end of this pew."
+
+
+ABIGAIL'S BAD BARGAIN.
+
+I hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well
+balanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,
+you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was
+cross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her
+heroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole
+regiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home
+and found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story,
+but had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not
+want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way
+to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was
+ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of
+her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she
+could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely
+and splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?
+
+First, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific
+battle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or
+commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning
+to night is in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your
+husband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in
+this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle.
+If he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If
+he do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment,
+remember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his
+place of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man
+has been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him
+out of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on
+his desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone
+wrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and
+forgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him.
+When you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or
+shop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there
+and not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.
+
+
+RESPECT SELF-SACRIFICE.
+
+Remember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is
+overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success
+or defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of
+men after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for
+their families. They begin to ask themselves anxiously the question:
+"How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home?
+Would my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go
+out into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My
+eyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy;
+how if I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business
+life and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.
+
+Some time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks
+married on a salary less than L150--that is, $750 a year--he should be
+discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too
+great for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America
+live by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's
+family expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens
+of thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and
+exhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and
+say you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by
+inches that the home may be kept up.
+
+
+BE LOVABLE.
+
+I charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as
+she was before marriage. The reason that so often a man ceases to
+love his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable. In many cases
+what elaboration of toilet before marriage, and what recklessness of
+appearance after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a slatternly
+woman--I mean a woman who never combs her hair until she goes out, or
+looks like a fright until somebody calls. That a man married to one of
+these creatures stays at home as little as possible is no wonder. It
+is a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three
+years, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is not required; but, O
+woman! if you are not willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can
+effect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to
+complain if he seek in other society those pleasant surroundings which
+you deny him.
+
+
+DO NOT COMPLAIN.
+
+Again, I charge you never talk to others about the frailties of your
+husband.[1] Some people have a way, in banter, of elaborately
+describing to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a
+husband or wife. Ah, the world will find out soon enough all the
+defects of your companion! No need of your advertising them! Better
+imitate those women who, having made mistake in affiance, always have
+a veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention.
+We must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live
+longer with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the
+precursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep
+the awful secret to yourself--keep it from every being in the universe
+except the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only
+a few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the
+grave, and say: "O Lord, I kept the marital secret! Thou knowest how
+well I kept it, and I thank Thee that the release has come at last.
+Give me some place where I can sit down and rest awhile from the
+horrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I begin the full
+raptures of heaven." And orders will be sent out to the usher angels,
+saying: "Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in the best
+room of the palace, and let twenty of the brightest angels wait on her
+for the next thousand years."
+
+
+AVOID MEDDLERS.
+
+Further, I charge you, let there be no outside interference with the
+conjugal relation. Neither neighbor nor confidential friend, nor
+brother, nor sister, nor father, nor mother, have a right to come in
+here. The married gossip will come around, and by the hour tell you
+how she manages her husband. You tell her plainly that if she will
+attend to the affairs of her household you will attend to yours. What
+damage some people do with their tongues! Nature indicates that the
+tongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is shut in, first by
+a barricade of teeth, and then by the door of the lips. One insidious
+talker can keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up. The Apostle
+Peter excoriated these busybodies in other people's matters, and St.
+Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them a
+sharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the lookout for them, and
+never return their calls, and treat them with coldest frigidity. For
+this reason, better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are
+opposed to them, but I thank God for what are called flats in these
+cities. They put a separate home within the means of nearly all the
+population. In your married relations you do not need any advice. If
+you and your husband have not skill enough to get along well alone,
+with all the advice you can import you will get along worse. What you
+want for your craft on this voyage is plenty of sea-room.
+
+
+BE INTELLIGENT.
+
+I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your
+husband. What with these floods of newspapers and books there is no
+excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past.
+If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may
+fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the
+merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the
+mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the
+professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological,
+or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man,
+after having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without
+information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about
+what is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the
+husband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must
+"go and see a man." In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay
+at home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is
+because there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his
+wife than anyone else if she could talk as well.
+
+
+ADORN THE HOME.
+
+I charge you, my sister, in every way to make your home attractive. I
+have not enough of practical knowledge about house adornment to know
+just what makes the difference, but here is an opulent house,
+containing all wealth of _bric-a-brac_, and of musical instrument, and
+of painting, and of upholstery, and yet there is in it a chill like
+Nova Zembla. Another home, with one-twentieth part of the outlay, and
+small supply of art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as you
+enter it, there comes upon body, mind, and soul a glow of welcome and
+satisfied and happy domesticity. The holy art of making the most
+comfort and brightness out of the means afforded, every wife should
+study.
+
+At the siege of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown
+by a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from
+the tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock
+discharged at him by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But without
+any weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any
+wife may slay all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and mother
+in prosperous circumstances and greatly admired was giving her chief
+time to social life. The husband spent his evenings away. The son,
+fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect
+that the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same
+turn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had
+better save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games
+were introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting
+things to tell her children. One morning the son said:
+
+"Father, you ought to have been home last night. We had a grand time.
+Such jolly games and such interesting stories!" This went on from
+night to night, and after a while the husband stayed in to see what
+was going on, and he finally got attracted, and added something of his
+own to the evening entertainments; and the result was that the wife
+and mother saved her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was
+not that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that
+ever lived since Abigail at the foot of the rock arrested the four
+hundred armed warriors?
+
+
+THE TRUE SPHERE.
+
+Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who
+think the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who
+want to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There
+are women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to
+interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is
+that the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and
+rear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God
+and the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great
+platform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made
+a missionary speech in her life, and at a missionary meeting I doubt
+whether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she
+raised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating
+religious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not
+that a better thing to do?
+
+Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing,
+frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
+opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten
+commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the
+complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,
+bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to
+discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent
+and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.
+
+
+A PRESSING WANT.
+
+What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned
+mothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest
+institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should
+have the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the
+old-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry
+wore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the
+Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture days, and was demonstrated
+on the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house
+long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet
+until in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous.
+While there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than
+there ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and
+there are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief
+sphere is outside instead of inside the home.
+
+
+A DEADLY SIN.
+
+Hence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a
+nuisance. It is card case _versus_ child's primer, carriage _versus_
+cradle, social popularity _versus_ domestic felicity. Hence
+infanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians,
+allopathic, hydropathic, homoeopathic, and eclectic are crying out in
+horror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical
+profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which
+says: "Thou shalt not kill," and the book of Revelation, which says:
+"All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with
+fire and brimstone." And the man or the woman who takes life a minute
+old will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who
+destroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriek of
+Judgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the
+high and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their
+own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination
+of the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a lot of
+infernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the
+Last Day, the crier of the Court shall with resounding "Oyez," "Oyez!"
+declare the "Oyer and Terminer" of the Universe opened, and the Judge,
+with gavel of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and
+the trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and
+patricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and
+infanticides of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or readers
+can say that they knew not what they were doing. Mighty God! arrest
+the evil that is overshadowing this century.
+
+
+THE HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
+
+I charge you, my sister, that you take your husband along with you to
+heaven. Of course this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I
+must take that for granted. It cannot be possible that after what
+Christianity has done for woman, and after taking the infinitely
+responsible position you have assumed as the head of the household,
+that you should be in a position antagonistic to Christ. It was not a
+slip of the tongue when I spoke of you as being at the head of the
+household. We men rather pride ourselves as being at the head of the
+household, but it is only a pleasant delusion. To whom do the children
+go when they have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be bound up
+or one of the first teeth that needs to be removed to make way for one
+that is crowding it out, to whom does the child go? For whom do
+children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream?
+Aye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too
+great or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the
+household in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in
+fact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the
+kingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven.
+
+You can do it! Of course God's almighty grace alone can convert him,
+but you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands out
+of heaven, and others garner them for it. If your religion, O wife! is
+simply the joke of the household, if you would rather go to the
+theatre than the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the neighborhood
+in progressive euchre, if your husband never sees you kneel at the
+bedside in prayer before retiring, if the only thing that reminds the
+family of your church relations is that on communion-day you get home
+late to dinner, you will not be able to take your husband to heaven,
+for the simple reason that you will not get there yourself. But I
+suppose that your religion is genuine, and that the husband realizes
+that there is in your soul a divine principle, and that, though you
+may be naturally quicker tempered than he is and have many
+imperfections that distress you more than they can any one else, still
+you are destined for the skies when the brief scenes of this life are
+over. How will you take him with you? There are two oars to that
+boat--prayer and holy example.
+
+But you say he belongs to a worldly club, or he does not believe a
+word of the Bible, or he is an inebriate and very loose in his habits?
+What you tell me shows that you don't understand that while you are at
+the one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and
+it is simply a question whether Almightiness is strong enough and
+keeps His word. I have no doubt there will be great conventions in
+heaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial
+assemblage the saints shall be telling what brought them to God, I
+believe that ten thousand times ten thousand will say: "My wife."
+
+
+A CONTRAST.
+
+I put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives,
+and let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his
+salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God
+some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her
+religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly
+maintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was
+her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first
+sent the arrows of conviction to my soul." The other testimony was
+from a dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family
+worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to
+neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet,
+you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." How many glorious married
+couples in heaven--Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and
+Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth,
+Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of
+them!
+
+As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's
+house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up,
+husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I
+proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I
+pronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and
+that is the shape of the Wedding Ring.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).
+
+
+
+
+COSTUME AND MORALS.
+
+    "Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are
+    haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,
+    walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their
+    feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their
+    tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their
+    round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and
+    the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and
+    the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and
+    nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,
+    and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the
+    fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,"--ISAIAH 3:16,
+    18-23.[2]
+
+
+This is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us two thousand six hundred
+years back, and sets us down in an ancient city. The procession of men
+and women is moving up and down the gay streets. It is the height of
+the fashionable season. The sensible men and women move with so much
+modesty that they do not attract our attention. But here come the
+haughty daughters of Jerusalem! They lean forward; they lean very much
+forward--so far forward as to be unnatural--teetering, wobbling,
+wriggling, flirting, or, as my text describes it, they "walk with
+stretched-forth necks, walking and mincing as they go."
+
+See! That is a princess. Look! That is a Damascus sword-maker. Look!
+That is a Syrian merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the lashing
+of the headbands, and the exhibitions of universal swagger attract the
+attention of the Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear upon
+the scene, and takes a picture for all the ages. But where is that
+scene? Vanished. Where are those gay streets? Vermin-covered
+population pass through them. Where are the hands, and the necks, and
+the foreheads, and the shoulders, and the feet that sported all that
+magnificence? Ashes! Ashes!
+
+That we should all be clad is proved by the opening of
+
+
+THE FIRST WARDROBE
+
+in Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far
+as our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is
+proved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with
+golden sunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a
+sky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
+furnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and
+scrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see
+the apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal
+forests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the
+Church, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she
+never will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a
+fern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs,
+does it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it
+might go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million
+spears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water--I mean the
+grass with the dew on it.
+
+When the prodigal came home his father not only put a coat on his
+back, but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor
+apostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the
+arrangement of a woman's hair, when he said in his epistle: "If a
+woman have long hair, it is a glory unto her." There will be fashion
+in heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It
+will decide the color of the dress; and the population of that
+country, by a beautiful law, will wear white.
+
+
+THE GODDESS OF FASHION.
+
+I say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I
+have no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject
+of human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in
+this country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to
+fall down and worship. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the
+bodies and souls of ten thousand victims.
+
+When I come to count the victims of fashion I find as many masculine
+as feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were
+the chief worshipper at this idolatrous shrine, and no doubt some men
+in the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at
+the more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous
+distribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew
+as for the other.
+
+
+MASCULINE FOLLIES.
+
+Men are as much the idolaters of fashion as women, but they sacrifice
+on a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars,
+and club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United
+States the men chew up and smoke one hundred millions of dollars'
+worth of tobacco every year. That is their fashion. In London not
+long ago a man died who started in life with $750,000; but he ate it
+all up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for
+some rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing
+him three or four hundred dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and
+had only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it
+dressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hours for digestion,
+then walked out on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into the
+Thames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen
+done on a small scale.
+
+But men do not abstain from millinery and elaboration of skirt through
+any superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages
+would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three
+and a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the
+disciples of custom just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so
+tight that they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness, and
+there are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for
+them, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like
+animated checkerboards. I say these things because I want to show you
+that I am impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes, in the
+language of the surrogate's office, "share and share alike."
+
+
+INDELICATE APPAREL.
+
+As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of
+improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple
+truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it,
+that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the
+temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a
+shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for
+vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can
+come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of
+masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided
+reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer
+of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a
+so-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel,
+ordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself
+immediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make
+vehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of
+the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the
+female costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and
+that fathers prohibit their daughters. The evil is terrific and
+overshadowing.
+
+
+STAGE COSTUMES.
+
+I suppose that the American stage is responsible for much of this. I
+do not go to the theatres, so I must take the evidence of the actors
+and managers of theatres, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A.M. Palmer,
+and Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have recently told us that the crime
+of undress is blasting the theatre, which by many is considered a
+school of morals, and indeed superior to the Church, and a forerunner
+of the millennium. Mr. Palmer says: "The bulk of the performances on
+the stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come
+just as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law.
+There never have been costumes worn on a stage of this city, either in
+a theatre, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of
+the chorus in recent comic opera productions." He says in regard to
+the female performers: "It is not a question whether they can sing,
+but just how little they will consent to wear." Mr. Bandmann, who has
+been twenty-nine years on the stage, and before almost all
+nationalities, says: "I unhesitatingly state that the taste of the
+present theatre-going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse and
+vulgar nature. The Hindoo would turn with disgust at such
+exhibitions, which are sought after and applauded on the stage of this
+country. Our shop windows are full of and the walls covered with show
+cards and posters which should be a disgrace to an enlightened country
+and an insult to the eye of a cultured community." Mr. Gilbert says:
+"Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community.
+Are these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say
+nothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like
+that? It is shameful!"
+
+I must take the testimony of the friends of the theatre and the
+confirmation which I see on the board fences and in the show windows
+containing the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose that
+those representations of play-house costume are true, for if they are
+not true, then those highly moral and religious theatres are swindling
+the public by inducing the people to the theatre by promises of
+spectacular nudity which they do not fulfill. Now, all this
+familiarizes the public with such improprieties of costume and
+depresses the public conscience as to what is allowable and right.
+
+
+DRAWING-ROOM RIVALRY.
+
+The parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre
+and opera bouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the
+latter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining
+on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass
+the stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will
+clap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half
+because the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform,
+and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly
+attire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor
+adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the
+fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of
+France, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of
+morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.
+Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means
+a contaminated and depraved society.
+
+
+EXTRAVAGANCE.
+
+It is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but
+extravagance of costume. This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable
+and ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to
+sell his country in order to get money to support his home wardrobe? I
+declare here before God and this people that the effort to keep up
+expensive establishments in this country is sending more business men
+to temporal perdition than all other causes combined. It was this that
+sent prominent business men to the watering of stocks, and life
+insurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and
+some of them to the penitentiary, and has completely upset our
+American finances.
+
+But why should I go to these famous defaultings, to show what men will
+do in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when
+you and I know scores of men who are put to their wit's end and are
+lashed from January to December in the attempt? Our Washington
+politicians may theorize until the expiration of their terms of office
+as to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this
+country. It will be of no use, and things will be no better until we
+learn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we
+can pay for.
+
+
+AN INCENTIVE TO DISHONESTY.
+
+There are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who in the
+vain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other
+folk's wardrobes are dying of muffs, and diamonds, and camel's-hair
+shawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left except what they
+give to cigars and wine suppers, and they die before their time, and
+they will expect us ministers to preach about them as though they were
+the victims of early piety; and after a high-class funeral, with
+silver handles at the side of their coffin of extraordinary
+brightness, it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated out of
+his legitimate expenses! Do not send to me to preach the funeral
+sermon of a man who dies like that. I would blurt out the whole truth,
+and tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's ribbons! The
+country is dressed to death.
+
+You are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public
+building in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to
+have cost, when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid
+more than five thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding dress.
+Cashmeres of a thousand dollars each are not rare on Broadway. It is
+estimated that there are eight thousand women in these two cities who
+have expended on their personal array two thousand dollars a year.
+
+What are the men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes?
+Steal--that is the only respectable thing they can do! During the last
+fifteen years there have been innumerable fine business men
+shipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comes in this way: a man
+thinks more of his family than all the world outside, and if they
+spend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe of the
+family across the street that they cannot bear the sight of, the man
+is thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family, and without
+translating his feelings into plain language, he goes into extortion
+and issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody
+else's name at the foot of a promissory note; and they all go down
+together--the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine,
+the children to be taken care of by those who were called poor
+relations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF CLOTHES!
+
+Act the first of the tragedy: A plain but beautiful home. Enter the
+newly married pair. Enter simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as
+much happiness as is ever found in one home.
+
+Act the second: Discontent with the humble home. Enter envy. Enter
+jealousy. Enter desire to display.
+
+Act the third: Enlargement of expenses. Enter all the queenly
+dressmakers. Enter the French milliners.
+
+Act the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter princes and princesses
+of New York life. Enter magnificent plate and equipage. Enter
+everything splendid.
+
+Act the fifth and last, winding up the scene: Enter the assignee.
+Enter the sheriff. Enter the creditors. Enter humiliation. Enter the
+wrath of God. Enter the contempt of society. Enter death. Now, let the
+silk curtain drop on the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights are
+out.
+
+Will you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of
+the men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle
+to pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me
+or not.
+
+
+CURTAILS BENEVOLENCE.
+
+Again, extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian alms-giving.
+Men and women put so much in personal display that they often have
+nothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity--a Christian man
+cracking his Palais Royal gloves across the back by shutting up his
+hand to hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a Christian woman
+at the story of the Hottentots crying copious tears into a twenty-five
+dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the
+collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know
+but it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to
+fashion--two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every
+dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him.
+Is not God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the
+Old Testament--is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a
+dollar when he takes but ten? We do not like that. We want to have
+ninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.
+
+Now, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents from you than God. I
+think one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly
+accumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule.
+God says: "Well, if that man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of
+a dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the
+man or woman who is honest with me." The greatest obstacle to charity
+in the Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on
+their table, and women so much on their dress, they have got nothing
+left for the work of God and the world's betterment.
+
+
+DISTRACTS ATTENTION.
+
+Again, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You
+know very well there are a good many people who go to church just as
+they go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women
+with souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man
+got his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our
+churches the preliminary exercises are taken up with the discussion
+of wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does
+not strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of
+public worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be
+turned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks.
+People sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at
+the same time in personal array, to sing:
+
+    "Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+      Thy better portion trace;
+    Rise from transitory things
+      Toward heaven, thy native place!"
+
+I adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: "Good Lord, deliver us!"
+
+
+MENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.
+
+Extravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or
+they dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on
+which we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to
+the human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street
+who, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours
+to arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of
+absorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be
+powerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left
+of a woman's intellect after giving years and years to the discussion
+of such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the
+summer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they
+once were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest.
+Showing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's
+fan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered
+twenty years ago.
+
+
+BARS HEAVEN.
+
+Yet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil.
+It shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder
+that shook Sinai declared: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"
+and you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the
+Christian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are
+all easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is
+for meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of
+their souls than of their bodies.
+
+Give up this idolatry of fashion or give up heaven. What would you do
+standing beside the Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to build
+chapels for the poor; or with that Christian woman of Boston, who fed
+fifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New
+Year's Day, giving out as a sort of doxology at the end of the
+meeting a pair of shoes to each one of them; or those Dorcases of
+modern society who have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and who
+will get eternal reward for every stitch they take?
+
+
+PERPETUAL ENVY.
+
+Oh, men and women, give up the idolatry of costume! The rivalries and
+the competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You
+will always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial
+residence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And
+if you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought
+something else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring
+the crow's feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come
+to die you will have a miserable time.
+
+I have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw
+one of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled
+pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them--a wasted
+life and a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body,
+mind, and soul had been exhausted in the worship of costume, and they
+could not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside they
+were mumbling out their regrets, and saying: "O God! O God!" Their
+garments hung up in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them.
+Without any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died
+without hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly
+death-beds on earth are the one where a man dies of delirium tremens,
+and the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her
+faculties of body, mind and soul in the worship of costume.
+
+
+JUDGMENT TO COME.
+
+My friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn
+on our bodies as well as for what repentances we have exercised with
+our souls. On that day I see coming in Beau Brummell of the last
+century without his cloak; Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old
+age he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and
+Absalom without his hair; and Marchioness Pompadour without her
+titles; and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street, when that was the
+centre of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture.
+
+And in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation,
+while among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who
+wore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah,
+who annually made a little coat for Samuel at the temple; and
+Grandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue;
+and Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the
+wives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present
+Christian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the
+kingdom of God. Christ announced who would make up the royal family of
+heaven when He said: "Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my
+brother, my sister, my mother."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] The list of feminine treasures given by the Revised Version is more
+intelligible. It is: "Their anklets, and the networks, and the
+crescents; the pendants, and the bracelets, and the mufflers; the
+head-tires, and the ankle chains, and the sashes, and the perfume boxes,
+and the amulets; the rings, and the nose-jewels; the festival robes, and
+the mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels; the hand-mirrors, and the
+fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils."
+
+
+
+
+HUSBANDS AND WIVES.
+
+    "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+    and the wife see that she reverence her husband."--EPHESIANS
+    5:33.
+
+
+All this good advice by a man who never married. He lived on to
+fifty-eight years of age, in eminent bachelorhood. Indeed, it was
+better for Paul to remain in single life, because he went on such
+rapid missionary expeditions that no companion could have endured the
+hardship. Celibacy in some cases is better. Such persons accomplish
+under such circumstances that which could not be accomplished in the
+other style of life.
+
+I have known men who remain unaffianced in order that they might take
+care of the children of a deceased brother; and what would become of
+the world without the self-sacrifice and helpfulness of the maiden
+aunts I cannot imagine.
+
+Among the brightest queens of Heaven will be those who took care of
+other people's children. Alas for that household which has not within
+easy call an Aunt Mary! I know that there are caricatures, and
+ungallant things sometimes said; but so far as my observation goes,
+they are quite equal in disposition to their married sisters. The
+state of celibacy is honored again by such persons as Macaulay and
+Washington Irving in literature, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix
+in philanthropy.
+
+But while Paul remained in the single state, he kept his eyes open,
+and he looked off upon the calm sea of married life, and upon the
+chopped sea of domestic perturbation. He comes forth in my text to
+say, "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;
+and the wife see that she reverence her husband;" implying that the
+wife ought to be lovable, so there might be something to love, and the
+man ought to be honorable, so there might be something to reverence.
+
+It is
+
+
+A MOST CONGRATULATORY THOUGHT
+
+that the vast majority of people in the married state are well mated.
+When the news is first announced in the outside world of the
+betrothal, there may be surprise and seeming incongruity, but as the
+years pass by it is demonstrated that the selection was divinely
+arranged. There may be great difference of temperament, great
+difference of appearance, great difference of circumstances. That is
+no objection. The sanguine and the phlegmatic temperaments make
+appropriate union, the blonde and the brunette, the quick and the
+slow, the French and the German. In the machinery of domestic life
+there is no more need for the driving wheel than for the brakes. That
+is the best union generally which has just the opposites.
+
+The best argument in behalf of marriage as a divine institution is the
+fact that the vast majority of conjugal relationships are the very
+best things that could have happened. Once in a while there is a
+resounding exception to the good rule, the attempt being made to marry
+fire and gunpowder, with the consequent explosion in the divorce
+courts; but in the vast majority of instances the conjugal relation is
+a beautiful illustration of what the Psalmist said when he declared,
+"God setteth the solitary in families."
+
+Taking it for granted, then, that you are well mated, I proceed to
+give you some
+
+
+PRESCRIPTIONS FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS;
+
+and, first of all, I remark:
+
+I. A spirit of compromise must be dominant. You must remember that you
+were twenty or thirty years forming independent habits and having your
+own way. In the marriage state these habits must be brought into
+accord, and there may be some ingenuity necessary. Be determined to
+have your own way, and there will be no peace. Let the rule be: In
+all matters of moral principle your determination shall be iron, and
+in all unimportant matters, willow. Whatever you may think of the word
+compromise in politics, without compromise there is no domestic peace.
+A great many people are willing to compromise, if you will do just as
+they want you to do; but there is no compromise in that. The rule
+ought to be: In all domestic matters, all social matters, all
+ecclesiastical matters, all political matters, firm adherence to
+fundamentals, easy surrender in non-essentials. Be not too proud or
+too stubborn to give up. Compromise! Compromise!
+
+II. I remark, again, that in order to domestic happiness there must be
+a spirit of
+
+
+CONSULTATION.
+
+The home ought to be a cabinet, where all the affairs of the household
+and all the affairs of business life come under comparison, inspection
+and advisal. That is an absurd rule we hear abroad in the world, that
+men ought never to take their business home. Ten thousand financial
+failures would have been avoided if men had consulted with their
+wives.
+
+In the first place, woman has a capacity to judge of moral character
+which man has not. Before you invite into your business partnership
+any man, you ought to introduce him to your wife, and get her judgment
+as to his capacity and his integrity. After five minutes' conversation
+she will tell you as much about him as you will know at the close of
+twenty years, and perhaps you may find out too late.
+
+A man proposes to come into your business partnership. You take him to
+your home. He tarries a little while, and is gone. You say to your
+wife, "Well, what do you think of him?" She says, "I don't like him at
+all." You say, "It's an absurd thing to form a prejudice against him
+on so short an acquaintance. I have known him for years, and I have
+never known any bad against him." "Well," she says, "I don't know why
+I have formed that opinion, but I tell you to beware. Put none of your
+financial interests in that man's keeping." Ten or fifteen years pass
+by. You come home some night and say, "Well, my dear, you are right;
+that man swindled me out of my last dollar." It is not because woman
+is wiser than man. It is because God has given her that peculiar
+intuition in regard to human character.
+
+Now, you have no right to go into an enterprise which involves the
+homestead, or the education of your children, or the fate of your
+entire family, without home consultation. Of course, all this implies
+that you did not marry a fool. If at the marriage altar you committed
+suicide, you had better keep all your business affairs in your own
+heart and head. But let us hope that you have sound common sense
+presiding in your household.
+
+
+A BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT.
+
+How much a wife may help a husband's business affairs was well
+illustrated in the case where the wife saved from the allowance of
+herself and the allowance of the family, a certain amount of money for
+a rainy day. After some time the husband, coming home, said: "Well,
+I'm going to suspend payment to-morrow. A few dollars would get me
+through, but I can't get the few dollars, and I'm going to ruin." That
+evening the wife said: "I wish you would hunt up the definition of the
+word 'independence' in Webster's Dictionary. Hunt it up for me." He
+opened Webster's Dictionary, and found the word "independence," and
+right opposite was a $100 bill. "Now," she said, "I would like to have
+you find the word 'gratitude.'" He turned to the word "gratitude," and
+there was another $100 bill. And before the evening was past she asked
+him to read a verse of a certain chapter of the Bible. He opened to
+the verse in the Bible, and there were $500, and before the evening
+had passed, the man had financial relief to tide him over his
+disasters. You call that dramatic. I call that beautifully Christian.
+
+In all expenditures there ought to be consultation. Do not dole out
+money to your wife as though she were a beggar. Let her know how much
+you have, or how little. Appeal to her intelligent judgment, and she
+will be content, and your own disposition will not be irritated. As
+long as you keep a mystery about your business matters she will wonder
+that the allowance is so small. No honorable woman wants to spend more
+money than can be afforded. Come into consultation with her on this
+matter. Show what are all your necessary outside expenses, all the
+money you have for cigars and dinners at Delmonico's, and how much it
+takes for the club-house and for the political campaign, and then have
+her present all the domestic expenses, and then, after consultation do
+your best.
+
+It is a bad sign when a man dare not tell his business transactions to
+his wife. There is something wrong. Suppose you that the gigantic
+forgeries which have been enacted in this country would ever have
+taken place if the wife had been consulted? The wife would have said,
+"Stop! Let us live in one room in the poorest house on the poorest
+street of the poorest town, and have nothing but dry bread rather than
+that you should make yourself culpable before God and the law." In
+the vast majority of cases where there has been exposure of great
+frauds, the wife has been the most surprised person in the community.
+
+
+A BANKER
+
+some time ago misused trust funds, and he went from fraud to fraud,
+and from knavery to knavery, until it was necessary for him to leave
+home before daylight. His wife said: "Where are you going?" "I am
+going to New York," said he "I am going on the early train." "Why,
+isn't this sudden?" she asked. "Oh, no; I expected to go," and then he
+left the room and went up to the room where his daughters slept,
+looked upon their calm faces for the last time, as he supposed, and
+started. He was brought back by the constables of an outraged law, and
+is now in the penitentiary.
+
+Do you suppose that man, with a good wife, as he had, an honest wife,
+as he had, a Christian wife, as he had, could have got into such an
+enormity if he had consulted in regard to her wishes? Consultation is
+the word--domestic consultation.
+
+III. Again: in order to domestic happiness, there must, in the
+conjugal state, be
+
+
+NO SECRETS
+
+kept one from the other. What one knows both must know. It is a bad
+sign when one partner in the conjugal relation is afraid to have the
+letters opened or read by the other partner. Surreptitious
+correspondence is always dangerous. If a man comes to you and says, "I
+am going to tell you a great privacy, and don't want you to tell
+anybody, not even your wife," say to him, "Well, now, you had better
+not tell me, for I shall tell her as soon as I get home."
+
+There must be no secrecy of association. You ought not to be unwilling
+to tell where you have been, and with whom you have been. Sometimes an
+unwise wife will have a lady confidante whom she makes a depository of
+privacies which they are pledged to keep between themselves. Beware!
+Anything that implies that husband and wife are two and not one
+implies peril, domestic peril, social peril, mighty peril.
+
+In the vast majority of cases of domestic infelicity coming to
+exposure in the courts, the trouble began by the accidental opening of
+a letter which implied correspondence which was never suspected. In
+the conjugal relations, secrets kept one from another are
+nitro-glycerine under the hearthstone, and the fuse is lighted!
+
+IV. Again: in order to your happiness there must be a spirit of
+
+
+FORBEARANCE.
+
+In the weeks, the months, the years that you were planning for each
+other's conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was
+observable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known
+the one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you
+are one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of
+faults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having
+found out all of each others imperfections, forbear.
+
+If the one be given to too much precision, and the other disorderly in
+habits; if the one be spendthrift and the other oversaving; if the one
+be loquacious, and the other reticent, forbear. Especially, if you
+both have inflammable tempers, do not both get mad at once. Take turn
+about! William Cowper put it well when he said:
+
+    "The kindest and the happiest pair
+    Will find occasion to forbear;
+    And something every day they live
+    To pity, and perhaps forgive."
+
+V. Again: in order to your happiness, let there be no interfering with
+each other's peculiar
+
+
+RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.
+
+If you are a Baptist and your wife a Pedo-Baptist, do not go to
+splashing water into each other's faces! If you are a Presbyterian and
+your husband is a Methodist, when he shouts "Hallelujah!" do not get
+nervous.
+
+If you have strong denominational proclivities, one of you had better
+go to one church, and the other had better go to another church; or,
+surrendering some of your intensity on that subject, as in hundreds of
+cases, come to some such church as the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where,
+while we adhere to the fundamentals of the Gospel, we do not care a
+rye straw for the infinitesimal differences between evangelical
+denominations--putting one drop of water on the brow, if that is
+enough baptism, and if not, then plunging the candidate clear out of
+sight, if that is preferred--not caring whether you believe you have
+been foreordained to be saved or not, if you are only saved; nor
+whether you believe in the perseverance of the saints or not, if you
+will only persevere; nor whether you prefer prayer by Episcopal
+liturgy or extemporaneous supplication, if you only pray.
+
+Do not let there be any religious contests across the breakfast table
+or the tea table. It makes but little difference from what direction
+you come toward the riven heart of Christ, if you only come up to the
+riven heart. Yet, I know in many families there is constant picking at
+opposite religious beliefs, and attempt at proselytism. You, the
+father, fight for Episcopacy, and you, the mother, fight for
+Presbyterianism, and your children will compromise the matter and be
+Nothingarians!
+
+VI. Again: I counsel you, in order to your domestic happiness, that
+you
+
+
+CULTIVATE EACH OTHER'S RELIGIOUS WELFARE.
+
+This is a profoundly agitating thought to every fair-minded man and
+woman. You live, together on earth; you want to live together forever.
+You do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your
+association, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God
+with you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is
+because you do not understand Christian stratagem.
+
+Every Christian companion may take his or her companion into glory.
+How? Ask God, and he will tell you how. Perhaps by occasional
+religious remark. Perhaps by earnest prayer. Perhaps by a consistent
+life. More probably by all these things combined. Paul put it
+forcefully when he said: "How knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+save thy husband? how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
+wife?" In this house, how many have been remarried for the skies!
+
+It has become so much the general rule that when in my congregation,
+as I often do, I find a family in which the wife is a Christian, and
+the husband is not, I just say frankly to him: "Now you have got to
+come in. You might just as well try to swim up against Niagara rapids
+as against the tide of religious influence which in this church is
+going to surge you into the kingdom of God. You must come in. You know
+that your wife is right in this matter of religion. She may be quick
+of temper, and you may sometimes lose your patience with her, but you
+know she is better than you are, and you know when she dies she will
+go as straight to heaven as a shot to a target.
+
+"And, if to-day, on the way home, a vehicle should dash down the
+street, and she should fall lifeless, with no opportunity for last
+words, you might have a doubt about what would become of you, and a
+doubt about what would become of the children, but you would have no
+doubt about her eternal destiny. Somewhere under the flush of her
+cheek, or under the pallor of her brow is the Lord's mark. She is your
+wife, but she is God's child, and you are not jealous of that
+relationship. You only wish that you yourself were a son of the Lord
+Almighty. Come and have the matter settled. If I die before you, I
+will not forget in the next world how you stood together here, but I
+will expect both of you. You must come.
+
+"I say it in all Christian love and emphasis, as a brother talks to a
+brother. You must come. You have been united so long, you cannot
+afford to have death divorce you. How long it is since you began the
+struggle of life together! You have helped each other on the road, and
+what you have done for each other God only knows. There have been
+tedious sicknesses, and anxious watching, and here and there a grave,
+short but very deep; and though the blossoms of the marriage day may
+have scattered, and the lips that pronounced you one may have gone
+into dust, you have through all these years been to each other true as
+steel.
+
+"Now, to-day, I am going to remarry you for heaven. This is the bridal
+day of your soul's peace. Here is the marriage altar. Kneel side by
+side, take the oath of eternal fidelity, clasp hands in a covenant
+never to be broken. I pronounce you one on earth, I pronounce you one
+for eternity. What God by His grace hath joined together, let not
+earth or hell put asunder. Hark! I hear a humming in the air--an
+anthem--a wedding march--organs celestial played upon by fingers
+seraphic."
+
+I do not think I ever read anything more beautiful and quaintly
+pathetic than
+
+
+COTTON MATHER'S DESCRIPTION
+
+of the departure of his wife from earth to Heaven: "The black day
+arrives. I had never seen so black a day in all the time of my
+pilgrimage. The desire of my eyes is this day to be taken from me at
+a stroke. Her death is lingering and painful. All the forenoon of this
+day she was in the pangs of death, and sensible until the last minute
+or two before her final expiration. I cannot remember the discourse
+that passed between us, only her devout soul was full of satisfaction
+about her going to a state of blessedness with the Lord Jesus Christ.
+As far as my distress would permit, I studied to confirm her
+satisfaction and consolation.
+
+"When I saw to what a point of resignation I was called of the Lord, I
+resolved, with His help, to glorify Him. So, two hours before she
+expired, I knelt by her bedside and took into my hands that dear hand,
+the dearest in the world, and solemnly and sincerely gave her up to
+the Lord. I gently put her out of my hands and laid away her hand,
+resolved that I would not touch it again. She afterward told me that
+she signed and sealed my act of resignation, and though before that
+she had called for me continually, after it she never asked for me any
+more. She conversed much until near two in the afternoon. The last
+sensible word she spoke was to her weeping father: 'Heaven, Heaven
+will make amends for all!'"
+
+Now let us be faithful in this relation of which I have been speaking.
+Do you want to know
+
+
+WHAT THE LORD THINKS OF IT?
+
+Read the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, where he says: "As the
+bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over
+thee." There is a wedding coming which will eclipse all the princely
+and imperial weddings the world ever saw. It was a great day when
+Napoleon took Josephine; it was a great day when Henry VIII. led Anne
+Boleyn over the cloth of gold on the street, the cloth of gold
+reaching up to the palace; it was a great day when the King of Spain
+took Mercedes; but there will be a greater time when the Lord shall
+take His bride, the Church, to Himself.
+
+Long time ago they were affianced, but she has been down in the
+wilderness. He has written her again and again, and the day of
+marriage is fixed. She has sent word to Him. He has sent word to her.
+But, oh! was there ever such a difference in estate? The King on the
+one side, the bride of the wilderness, poor and persecuted, on the
+other. The wealth of the universe on the one side, the obscurity of
+the ages on the other. The pomp of heaven on the one side, the poverty
+of earth on the other. But He will endow her with all His wealth, and
+raise her to sit with Him on a throne forever.
+
+Come, thou bridal morn of the ages! Come! and there shall be the
+rumbling of great wheels, great chariot wheels down the sky, and there
+shall be riders ahead and mounted cavalry behind, the conquerors of
+heaven on white horses. Clear the way! A thousand trumpets blare.
+"Behold! the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him."
+
+Then the charioteers shall rein in their bounding steeds of fire, and
+the King shall dismount from the chariot, and He shall take by the
+hand the bride of the wilderness, all the crowded galleries of the
+universe, the spectators. Ring all the wedding bells of heaven. The
+King lifts the bride into the chariot and cries, "Drive on! drive up!"
+and the clouds shall spread their cloth of gold for the procession,
+and the twain shall go through the gates triumphant, and up the
+streets, and then step into the palace at the banquet, where ten
+thousand potentates and principalities and dominations, cherubic and
+archangelic, with ten thousand gleaming and uplifted chalices, shall
+celebrate the day when the King of Heaven and earth brings home His
+bride from the wilderness. Make haste, my beloved. Be thou like to a
+roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.
+
+
+
+
+MATRIMONIAL DISCORDS.
+
+    "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"--AMOS 3:3.
+
+
+A church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within
+a world, is spelled by four letters--Home! If things go right there,
+they go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong
+everywhere. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the foundation of
+Church and State. A man never gets higher than his own garret or lower
+than his own cellar. In other words, domestic life overarches and
+undergirds all other life. The highest House of Congress is the
+domestic circle; the rocking-chair in the nursery is higher than a
+throne. George Washington commanded the forces of the United States,
+but Mary Washington commanded George. Chrysostom's mother made his pen
+for him. If a man should start out and run seventy years in a straight
+line he could not get out from under the shadow of his own
+mantelpiece. I therefore talk to you this morning about a matter of
+infinite and eternal moment when I speak of your home.
+
+
+THE SOCIAL BALANCE.
+
+As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then
+he gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you
+lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the
+cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience,
+another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the
+enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or
+made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,
+the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It
+is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that
+radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater,
+taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the
+opposites.
+
+I have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a
+driving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the
+centre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives
+to Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them
+with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are
+not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The
+water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and
+the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and
+the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that
+God has put us, or intended we should occupy.
+
+
+A RELIC OF EDEN.
+
+For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in
+still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same
+varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in
+temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
+husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister
+be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and
+Martha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be
+no Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
+The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;
+the bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his
+hand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot
+forth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron
+beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come
+whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but
+there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River
+Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does
+not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an
+addition of ribs.
+
+
+THE HOME ASSAULTED.
+
+This institution of marriage has been defamed in our day, and
+influences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem
+or a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively
+silent, novels--their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness--are
+trying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation
+in regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and
+eternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! It
+is a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or
+hell. Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands! Alas for the
+mingling of the nightshade with the marriage garlands! Alas for the
+venom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas for the white frosts of
+eternal death that kill the orange blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus
+Christ is to assert what is right and to assert what is wrong.
+
+
+THE ASSAULT OF THE SORDID.
+
+Attempt has been made to take the marriage institution, which was
+intended for the happiness and elevation of the race, and make it a
+mere commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and lands and
+equipage; a business partnership of two, stuffed up with the stories
+of romance and knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and feminine
+angelhood. The two after a while have roused up to find that, instead
+of the paradise they dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van
+Amburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild-cats. Twenty thousand
+divorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst revolution that
+France ever saw. It was only the first course in that banquet of hell;
+and I tell you what you know as well as I do, that wrong notions on
+the subject of Christian marriage are the cause at this day of more
+moral outrage before God and man than any other cause.
+
+There are some things that I want to bring before you. I know there
+are those of you who have had homes set up for a great many years; and
+then there are those here who have just established their home. They
+have only been in it a few months or a few years. Then there are those
+who will, after awhile, set up for themselves a home, and it is right
+that I should speak out upon these themes.
+
+
+THE BENEFICENT GUEST.
+
+My first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new home, if it be a
+new home, and let Him who was a guest at Bethany be in your
+household; let the divine blessing drop upon your every hope and plan
+and expectation. Those young people who begin with God end with
+heaven. Have on your right hand the engagement ring of the divine
+affection. If one of you be a Christian, let that one take a Bible and
+read a few verses in the evening-time, and then kneel down and commend
+yourselves to Him who setteth the solitary in families. I want to tell
+you that the destroying angel passes by without touching or entering
+the door-post sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant.
+Why is it that in some families they never get along, and in others
+they always get along well? I have watched such cases, and have come
+to a conclusion. In the first instance, nothing seemed to go
+pleasantly, and after awhile came devastation, domestic disaster or
+estrangement. Why? They started wrong! In the other case, although
+there were hardships and trials, and some things that had to be
+explained, still things went on pleasantly until the very last. Why?
+They started right!
+
+
+FORBEARANCE NEEDED.
+
+My advice to you in your home is to exercise to the very last
+possibility of your nature the law of forbearance. Prayers in the
+household will not make up for everything. Some of the best people in
+the world are the hardest to get along with. There are people who
+stand up in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are
+uncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you
+want it. Sometimes it will be the duty of the husband, and sometimes
+of the wife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on your rights,
+and you will have a Waterloo with no Blucher coming up at nightfall to
+decide the conflict.
+
+
+A GRANDFATHER'S APOLOGY.
+
+Never be ashamed to apologize when you have done wrong in domestic
+affairs. Let that be a law of your household. The best thing I ever
+heard of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this: that once, having
+unrighteously rebuked one of his children, he himself having lost his
+patience, and, perhaps, having been misinformed of the child's doings,
+found out his mistake, and in the evening of the same day gathered all
+his family together, and said: "Now I have one explanation to make,
+and one thing to say. Thomas, this morning, I rebuked you very
+unfairly. I am very sorry for it. I rebuked you in the presence of the
+whole family, and now I ask your forgiveness in their presence." It
+must have taken some courage to do that. It was right, was it not?
+Never be ashamed to apologize for domestic inaccuracy. Find out the
+points; what are the weak points, if I may call them so, of your
+companion, and then stand aloof from them.
+
+Do not carry the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the
+wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband
+be careful where he throws his slippers. If the husband come home from
+the store with his patience all exhausted, do not let the wife
+unnecessarily cross his temper; but both stand up for your rights, and
+I will promise the everlasting sound of the war-whoop. Your life will
+be spent in making up, and marriage will be to you an unmitigated
+curse. Cowper said:
+
+    "The kindest and the happiest pair
+    Will find occasion to forbear;
+    And something every day they live,
+    To pity, and perhaps forgive."
+
+I advise, also, that you make your chief pleasure circle around about
+that home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband
+spend the most of his nights away from home, of choice, and not of
+necessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the
+cashier. If the wife throw the cares of the household in the servant's
+lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or theatre,
+she may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that
+would confound a French milliner, but they are orphans. Oh, it is sad
+when a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off
+to the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw
+them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but the jaws of New
+York and Brooklyn dissipation are swallowing down more little children
+to-day than all the monsters that ever crawled upon the banks of the
+Ganges!
+
+
+A GODLESS MOTHER'S GRIEF.
+
+I have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on the death of a child she
+had neglected. It was not so much grief that she felt from the fact
+that the child was dead as the fact that she had neglected it. She
+said: "If I had only watched over and cared for the child, I know God
+would not have taken it." The tears came not; it was a dry, blistering
+tempest--a scorching simoon of the desert. When she wrung her hands it
+seemed as if she would twist her fingers from their sockets; when she
+seized her hair it seemed as if she had, in wild terror, grasped a
+coiling serpent with her right hand.
+
+No tears! Comrades of the little one came in and wept over the coffin;
+neighbors came in, and the moment they saw the still face of the child
+the shower broke. No tears for her. God gives tears as the summer rain
+to the parched soul; but in all the universe the driest and hottest,
+the most scorching and consuming thing is a mother's heart if she has
+neglected her child, when once it is dead. God may forgive her, but
+she will never forgive herself. The memory will sink the eyes deeper
+into the sockets, and pinch the face, and whiten the hair, and eat up
+the heart with vultures that will not be satisfied, forever plunging
+deeper their iron beaks. Oh, you wanderers from your home, go back to
+your duty! The brightest flowers in all the earth are those which grow
+in the garden of a Christian household, clambering over the porch of a
+Christian home.
+
+
+MATRIMONIAL CONGENIALITY.
+
+I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James
+Mackintosh, one of the most eminent and elegant men that ever lived,
+while standing at the very height of his eminence, said to a great
+company of scholars: "My wife made me." The wife ought to be the
+advising partner in every firm. She ought to be interested in all the
+losses and gains of shop and store. She ought to have a right--she has
+a right--to know everything. If a man goes into a business transaction
+that he dare not tell his wife of, you may depend that he is on the
+way either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things which
+he does not wish to trouble his wife with; but if he dare not tell
+her, he is on the road to discomfiture.
+
+On the other hand, the husband ought to be sympathetic with the wife's
+occupation. It is no easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that could
+have endured martyrdom as well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has
+actually been worn out by house management. There are a thousand
+martyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexations of
+the day, around the stove or the table, or in the nursery or parlor,
+to have your husband say: "You know nothing about trouble; you ought
+to be in the store half an hour." Sympathy of occupation!
+
+If the husband's work cover him with the soot of the furnace or the
+odors of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily
+disgusted at the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your gains are one,
+your interests are one, your losses are one; lay hold of the work of
+life with both hands. Four hands to fight the battles; four eyes to
+watch for the danger; four shoulders on which to carry the trials. It
+is a very sad thing when the painter has a wife who does not like
+pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when she has a husband
+who does not like music.
+
+
+GENTEEL BUSINESS.
+
+It is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited unless her husband
+has what is called a "genteel business." So far as I understand a
+"genteel business," it is something to which a man goes at ten o'clock
+in the morning, and from which he comes home at two or three o'clock
+in the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for doing nothing.
+That is, I believe, a "genteel business;" and there has been many a
+wife who has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the husband
+has given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning of the
+banisters, or the building of the walls, and put himself in circles
+where he has nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine, and get
+himself into habits that upset him, going down in the maelstrom,
+taking his wife and children with him.
+
+There are a good many trains running from earth to destruction. They
+start all the hours of the day, and all the hours of the night. There
+are the freight trains; they go very slowly and very heavily; and
+there are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, and
+they stop very often and let a man get out when he wants to. But
+genteel idleness is an express train; Satan is the stoker, and Death
+is the engineer; and though one may come out in front of it and swing
+the red flag of "danger," or the lantern of God's Word, it makes just
+one shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout and a
+wail and a shriek--crash, crash! There are two classes of people sure
+of destruction: First, those who have nothing to do; secondly, those
+who have something to do, but are too lazy or too proud to do it.
+
+
+LOVE TO PRESIDE.
+
+I have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a happy
+home, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the
+domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress
+you give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you
+occupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone. When the
+husband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness
+of voice, by strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of
+domestic bliss has become a despotism that neither God nor man will
+abide. Oh, ye who promised to love each other at the altar, how dare
+you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on your affection.
+It is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it live again. The
+blast from hell that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness
+of darkness forever.
+
+
+A HOUSE NOT A HOME.
+
+Here are a man and wife; they agree in nothing else, but they agree
+they will have a home. They will have a splendid house, and they think
+that if they have a house they will have a home. Architects make the
+plan, and the mechanics execute it; the house to cost one hundred
+thousand dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread, lights are
+hoisted, curtains are hung, cards of invitation sent out. The horses
+in gold-plated harness prance at the gate; guests come in and take
+their places; the flute sounds; the dancers go up and down; and with
+one grand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the mirth of the great
+town wheel amidst the pictured walls.
+
+Ha! this is happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the
+music; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow of sculpture; sound
+it up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness,
+indeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to
+Happiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers
+and pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and let it be
+a throne; and then let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and we
+will stand around and, all chalices lifted, we will say: "Drink, O
+Queen! live forever!"
+
+
+LIGHTS OUT.
+
+But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of
+the impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the
+household come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amid
+the parlor floor. But, alas! as they come back the flowers have faded,
+the sweet odors have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead
+of the Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish,
+with bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her hair.
+
+The romp and joyous step of the dancers who have left seems rumbling
+yet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses
+of the feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into
+blood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors
+catch tangled in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of
+wind comes through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber,
+in which all the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers
+come the words: "Happiness is not in us!" And the arches respond: "It
+is not in us!" And the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by
+invisible fingers, answer: "Happiness is not in us!" And the frozen
+lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the throne of wilted
+flowers, she strikes her bony hands together, and groans: "It is not
+in me!"
+
+
+HAPPINESS IN POVERTY.
+
+That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a
+year--only one thousand--goes to his home, set up three months ago,
+just after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the door; love sits
+with him at the table; love talks over the work of the day; love takes
+down the Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and they
+kneel, and while they are kneeling--right in that plain room, on that
+plain carpet--the angels of God build a throne, not out of flowers
+that perish and fade away, but out of garlands of heaven, wreath on
+top of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then
+the harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one who mounted
+the throne, with eye so bright and brow so fair that the twain knew it
+was Christian Love. And they knelt at the throne, and, putting one
+hand on each head, she blessed them, and said: "Happiness is with me!"
+And that throne of celestial bloom withered not with the passing
+years; and the queen left not the throne till one day the married pair
+felt stricken in years--felt themselves called away, and knew not
+which way to go, and the queen bounded from the throne, and said:
+"Follow me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of everlasting
+love." And so they went up to sing songs of love, and walk on
+pavements of love, and to live together in mansions of love, and to
+rejoice forever in the truth that God is love.
+
+
+
+
+HOTELS VERSUS HOMES.
+
+    "And brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the
+    morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to
+    the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever
+    thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee."--LUKE
+    10:34, 35.
+
+
+This is the good Samaritan paying the hotel bill of a man who had been
+robbed and almost killed by bandits. The good Samaritan had found the
+unfortunate on a lonely, rocky road, where, to this very day,
+depredations are sometimes committed upon travelers, and had put the
+injured man into the saddle, while this merciful and well-to-do man
+had walked till they got to the hotel, and the wounded man was put to
+bed and cared for. It must have been a very superior hotel in its
+accommodations, for, though in the country, the landlord was paid at
+the rate of what in our country would be four or five dollars a day, a
+penny being then a day's wages, and the two pennies paid in this case
+about two days' wages. Moreover, it was one of those kind-hearted
+landlords who are wrapped up in the happiness of their guests, because
+the good Samaritan leaves the poor wounded fellow to his entire care,
+promising that when he came that way again he would pay all the bills
+until the invalid got well.
+
+
+THE VALUE OF HOTELS.
+
+Hotels and boarding-houses are necessities. In very ancient times they
+were unknown, because the world had comparatively few inhabitants, who
+were not much given to travel, and private hospitality met all the
+wants of sojourners, as when Abraham rushed out at Mamre to invite the
+three men to sit down to a dinner of veal; as when the people were
+positively commanded to be given to hospitality; as in many of the
+places in the East these ancient customs are practiced to-day. But we
+have now hotels presided over by good landlords, and boarding-houses
+presided over by excellent host or hostess, in all neighborhoods,
+villages and cities, and it is our congratulation that those of our
+land surpass all other lands. They rightly become the permanent
+residences of many people, such as those who are without families,
+such as those whose business keeps them migratory, such as those who
+ought not, for various reasons of health or peculiarity of
+circumstances, take upon themselves the cares of housekeeping.
+
+
+QUEENLY CATERERS.
+
+Many a man falling sick in one of these boarding-houses or hotels has
+been kindly watched and nursed; and by the memory of her own
+sufferings and losses the lady at the head of such a house has done
+all that a mother could do for a sick child, and the slumberless eye
+of God sees and appreciates her sacrifices in behalf of the stranger.
+Among the most marvelous cases of patience and Christian fidelity are
+many of those who keep boarding-houses, enduring without resentment
+the unreasonable demands of their guests for expensive food and
+attentions for which they are not willing to pay an equivalent--a lot
+of cranky men and women who are not worthy to tie the shoe of their
+queenly caterer. The outrageous way in which boarders sometimes act to
+their landlords and landladies show that these critical guests had bad
+early rearing, and that in the making-up of their natures all that
+constitutes the gentleman and lady were left out. Some of the most
+princely men and some of the most elegant women that I know of to-day
+keep hotels and boarding-houses.
+
+But one of the great evils of this day is found in the fact that a
+large population of our towns and cities are giving up and have given
+up their homes and taken apartments, that they may have more freedom
+from domestic duties and more time for social life, and because they
+like the whirl of publicity better than the quiet and privacy of a
+residence they can call their own. The lawful use of these hotels and
+boarding-houses is for most people while they are in transitu: but as
+a terminus they are in many cases demoralization, utter and complete.
+That is the point at which families innumerable have begun to
+disintegrate. There never has been a time when so many families,
+healthy and abundantly able to support and direct homes of their own,
+have struck tent and taken permanent abode in these public
+establishments. It is an evil wide as Christendom, and by voice and
+through the newspaper press I utter warning and burning protest, and
+ask Almighty God to bless the word, whether in the hearing or reading.
+
+
+PROMOTERS OF GOSSIP.
+
+In these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full
+sway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general
+inspection--how they look when they come down in the morning and when
+they get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they
+receive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do
+not wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat,
+and how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be
+isolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him:
+Who is he? Where did he come from? How long is he going to stay? Has
+he paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some
+crime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong
+about him, or he would speak.
+
+The whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out
+about him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his
+door unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been
+inspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the
+way they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the
+question, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a
+monomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but
+minds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot
+sometimes hinder their places from becoming
+
+
+A PANDEMONIUM
+
+of whisperers, and reputations are torn to tatters, and evil
+suspicions are aroused, and scandals started, and the parliament of
+the family is blown to atoms by some Guy Fawkes who was not caught in
+time, as was his English predecessor of gunpowdery reputation.
+
+The reason is that while in private homes families have so much to
+keep them busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences
+there are so many who have nothing to do, and that always makes
+mischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in
+consultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they
+got to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get
+out of breath before reaching there, and not feel in full glow of
+animosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at
+all. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 are on the same corridor, and
+when one carrion crow goes "Caw! Caw!" all the other crows hear it and
+flock together over the same carcass. "Oh, I have heard something
+rich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it." And the first guffaw
+increases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as
+they separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other
+circle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the
+top room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that
+evening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until
+autumnal fires sweeping across Illinois prairies are less raging and
+swift than that flame of consuming reputation blazing across the
+village or city.
+
+Those of us who were brought up in the country know that the
+old-fashioned hatching of eggs in the hay-mow required four or five
+weeks of brooding, but there are new modes of hatching by machinery,
+which take less time and do the work in wholesale. So, while the
+private home may brood into life an occasional falsity, and take a
+long time to do it, many of the boarding-houses and family hotels
+afford a swifter and more multitudinous style of moral incubation, and
+one old gossip will get off the nest after one hour's brooding,
+clucking a flock of thirty lies after her, each one picking up its
+little worm of juicy regalement. It is no advantage to hear too much
+about your neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking
+care of their faults that you will have no time to look after your
+own. And while you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden yours
+will get all overgrown with horse-sorrel and mullen stalks.
+
+
+A WRONG TO CHILDREN.
+
+One of the worst damages that comes from the herding of so many people
+into boarding-houses and family hotels is inflicted upon children. It
+is only another way of bringing them up on the commons. While you have
+your own private house you can, for the most part, control their
+companionship and their whereabouts; but by twelve years of age in
+these public resorts they will have picked up all the bad things that
+can be furnished by the prurient minds of dozens of people. They will
+overhear blasphemies, and see quarrels, and get precocious in sin,
+and what the bartender does not tell them the porter or hostler or
+bell-boy will.
+
+Beside that, the children will go out into this world without the
+restraining, anchoring, steadying and all-controlling memory of a
+home. From that none of us who have been blessed of such memory have
+escaped. It grips a man for eighty years, if he lives so long. It
+pulls him back from doors into which he otherwise would enter. It
+smites him with contrition in the very midst of his dissipations. As
+the fish already surrounded by
+
+
+THE LONG WIDE NET
+
+swim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as they please, and with
+gay toss of silvery scale they defy the sportsman on the beach, and
+after a while the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over hand,
+and hand over hand, and it is a long while before the captured fins
+begin to feel the net, and then they dart this way and that, hoping to
+get out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up
+to the very feet of the captors, so the memory of an early home
+sometimes seems to relax and let men out further and further from God
+and further and further from shore--five years, ten years, twenty
+years, thirty years; but some day they find an irresistible mesh
+drawing them back, and they are compelled to retreat from their
+prodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to
+escape the impression, and try to dive deeper down in sin, after a
+while are brought clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.
+
+If it be possible, O father and mother! let your sons and daughters go
+out into the world under the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure
+home. About your two or three rooms in a boarding-house or a family
+hotel you can cast no such glorious sanctity. They will think of these
+public caravanseries as an early stopping place, malodorous with old
+victuals, coffees perpetually steaming, and meats in everlasting stew
+or broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along
+which drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning,
+rapping at the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do not be
+guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.
+
+
+WHAT A HOME IS.
+
+A home is four walls enclosing one family with identity of interest,
+and a privacy from outside inspection so complete that it is a world
+in itself, no one entering except by permission--bolted and barred and
+chained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used
+in law books and legal circles is mightily suggestive--every man's
+house is his castle. As much so as though it had drawbridge,
+portcullis, redoubt, bastion and armed turret. Even the officer of the
+law may not enter to serve a writ, except the door be voluntarily
+opened unto him; burglary, or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive
+that the law clashes its iron jaws on any one who attempts it. Unless
+it be necessary to stay for longer or shorter time in family hotel or
+boarding-house--and there are thousands of instances in which it is
+necessary, as I showed you at the beginning--unless in this
+exceptional case, let neither wife nor husband consent to such
+permanent residence.
+
+
+HAZARDOUS TO MORALS.
+
+The probability is that the wife will have to divide her husband's
+time with public smoking or reading room, or with some coquettish
+spider in search of unwary flies; and if you do not entirely lose your
+husband it will be because he is divinely protected from the disasters
+that have whelmed thousands of husbands with as good intentions as
+yours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent
+to such a life unless he is sure his wife can withstand the temptation
+of social dissipation which sweeps across such places with the force
+of the Atlantic Ocean when driven by a September equinox. Many wives
+give up their homes for these public residences so that they may give
+their entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees,
+and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and
+round and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise and shoots
+off into a tangent. But the difference is, in one case it is a top and
+in the other a soul.
+
+
+THE LARES AND PENATES.
+
+Beside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around
+the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while
+the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is
+the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them."
+Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge,
+upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home
+are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to
+arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic
+happiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments
+of a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can
+call your own, and are associated with the different members of your
+household, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic
+history. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have
+been gathering until every figure in the carpet, and every panel of
+the door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its
+own, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or
+daughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it
+becomes when one can say: "In that room such a one was born; in that
+bed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a
+one had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt
+for her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came
+back from a sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was mother's
+rocking chair." What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!
+
+
+HOSPITALITY CURTAILED.
+
+The public residence of hotel and boarding-house abolishes the grace
+of hospitality. Your guest does not want to come to such a table. No
+one wants to run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless
+hyper-criticism. Unless you have a home of your own you will not be
+able to exercise the best rewarded of all the graces. For exercise of
+this grace what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of
+her son to life because she entertained Elisha, and to the widow of
+Zarephath in the perpetual oil well of the miraculous cruise because
+she fed a hungry prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her life
+at the demolition of Jericho because she entertained the spies and to
+Laban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of
+his entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his rescue from the
+destroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary
+and Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because they entertained
+Christ, and to Publius in the island of Melita in the healing of his
+father because of the entertainment of Paul drenched from the
+shipwreck, and of innumerable houses throughout Christendom upon which
+have come blessings from generation to generation because their doors
+swung easily open in the enlarging, ennobling, irradiating, and divine
+grace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has been, but
+I have had men and women visiting at my house who left a benediction
+on every room--in the blessing they asked at the table, in the prayer
+they offered at the family altar, in the good advice they gave the
+children, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament of
+their countenances; and their departure was the sword of bereavement.
+
+The Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had a royal
+
+
+CUP OF TEN CURVES,
+
+or lips, each one having on it the name of the distinguished person
+who had drank from it. And that cup which we offer to others in
+Christian hospitality, though it be of the plainest earthenware, is a
+royal cup, and God can read on all its sides the names of those who
+have taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you
+have a home of your own. It is the delusion as to what is necessary
+for a home that hinders so many from establishing one. Thirty rooms
+are not necessary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor
+three. In the right way plant a table, and couch, and knife and fork,
+and a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a young paradise. Just start
+a home, on however small a scale, and it will grow. When King Cyrus
+was invited to dine with an humble friend the king made the one
+condition of his coming that the only dish be one loaf of bread, and
+the most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the
+plainest fare.
+
+Do not be caught in the delusion of many thousands in postponing a
+home until they can have an expensive one. That idea is the devil's
+trap that catches men and women innumerable who will never have any
+home at all. Capitalists of America, build plain homes for the people.
+Let this tenement-house system, in which hundreds of thousands of the
+people of our cities are wallowing in the mire, be broken up by small
+homes, where people can have their own firesides and their own altar.
+In this great continent there is room enough for every man and woman
+to have a home. Morals and civilization and religion demand it.
+
+
+SMALL HOMES NEEDED
+
+We want done all over this land what George Peabody and Lady
+Burdett-Coutts did in England, and some of the large manufacturers of
+this country have done for the villages and cities, in building small
+houses at cheap rents, so that the middle classes can have separate
+homes. They are the only class not provided for. The rich have their
+palaces, and the poor have their poorhouses, and criminals have their
+jails; but what about the honest middle classes, who are able and
+willing to work, and yet have small income? Let the capitalists,
+inspired of God and pure patriotism, rise and build whole streets of
+small residences. The laborer may have, at the close of the day, to
+walk or ride further than is desirable to reach it, but when he gets
+to his destination in the eventide he will find something worthy of
+being called by that glorious and impassioned and heaven-descended
+word, "home."
+
+
+SOMETHING TO SAVE FOR.
+
+Young married man, as soon as you can buy such a place, even if you
+have to put on it a mortgage reaching from base to cap-stone. The
+much abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent
+and provident is the beginning of a competency and a fortune, for the
+reason he will not be satisfied until he has paid it off, and all the
+household are put on stringent economies until then. Deny yourself all
+superfluities and all luxuries until you can say: "Everything in this
+house is mine, thank God!--every timber, every brick, every foot of
+plumbing, every door-sill." Do not have your children born in a
+boarding-house, and do not yourself be buried from one. Have a place
+where your children can shout and sing and romp without being
+overhauled for the racket. Have a kitchen where you can do something
+toward the reformation of evil cookery and the lessening of this
+nation of dyspeptics. As Napoleon lost one of his great battles by an
+attack of indigestion, so many men have such
+
+
+A DAILY WRESTLE
+
+with the food swallowed that they have no strength left for the battle
+of life; and though your wife may know how to play on all musical
+instruments, and rival a prima donna, she is not well educated unless
+she can boil an Irish potato and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet
+sometimes decides the fate of families and nations.
+
+Have a sitting-room with at least one easy chair, even though you have
+to take turns at sitting in it, and books out of the public library or
+of your own purchase for the making of your family intelligent, and
+checkerboards and guessing matches, with an occasional blind man's
+buff, which is of all games my favorite. Rouse up your home with all
+styles of innocent mirth, and gather up in your children's nature a
+reservoir of exuberance that will pour down refreshing streams when
+life gets parched, and the dark days come, and the lights go out, and
+the laughter is smothered into a sob.
+
+
+CHRIST IN THE HOME.
+
+First, last and all the time, have Christ in your home. Julius Caesar
+calmed the fears of an affrighted boatman who was rowing him in a
+stream by stating: "So long as Caesar is with you in the same boat no
+harm can happen." And whatever storm of adversity or bereavement or
+poverty may strike your home all is well as long as you have Christ
+the King on board. Make your home so far-reaching in its influence
+that down to the last moment of your children's life you may hold them
+with a heavenly charm. At seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of
+the American Senate lay dying at Washington--I mean Henry Clay, of
+Kentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside and the "old man eloquent,"
+after a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and
+cis-Atlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept
+saying in his dream over and over again: "My mother! mother! mother!"
+May the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy,
+and so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven, in
+which place may we all meet--father, mother, son, daughter, brother,
+sister, grandfather and grandmother, and grandchild, and the entire
+group of precious ones, of whom we must say in the words of
+transporting Charles Wesley:
+
+    "One family we dwell in Him,
+      One church above, beneath;
+    Though now divided by the stream--
+      The narrow stream of death;
+    One army of the living God,
+      To His command we bow;
+    Part of the host have crossed the flood,
+      And part are crossing now."
+
+
+
+
+EASY DIVORCE.
+
+    "What therefore God hath joined together let not man put
+    asunder."--MATTHEW 19:6
+
+
+That there are hundreds and thousands of infelicitous homes in America
+no one will doubt. If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that
+might be locked up and abandoned; but in many a home there is a
+skeleton in the hallway and a skeleton in all the apartments.
+
+
+"UNHAPPILY MARRIED"
+
+are two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox
+minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a hell; they are
+there now. Sometimes a grand and gracious woman will be thus
+incarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with
+Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a
+consecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or
+united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both
+parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and
+his wife smokes and swears, and Froude, the historian, is mean enough,
+because of the shekels he gets for the manuscript,[3] to pull aside
+the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Five,
+Cheyne Row. Some say that for
+
+
+THE ALLEVIATION
+
+of all these domestic disorders of which we hear, easy divorce is a
+good prescription. God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as He
+authorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully
+divorced as I have for one lawfully married. But you know and I know
+that wholesale divorce is one of
+
+
+OUR NATIONAL SCOURGES.
+
+I am not surprised at this when I think of the influences which have
+been abroad militating against the marriage relation.
+
+For many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about a
+free-love millennium. There were meetings of this kind held in the
+Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Cooper Institute, New York, Tremont
+Temple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most
+prominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great
+promiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the
+tyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women's
+rights, and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short
+curls and short dress and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with
+God because they were created women; while on the platform sat meek
+men with soft accent and cowed demeanor, apologetic for masculinity,
+and holding the parasols while the termagant orators went on preaching
+the gospel of free love.
+
+That campaign of about twenty years set more devils in the marriage
+relation than will be exorcised in the next fifty. Men and women went
+home from such meetings so permanently confused as to who were their
+wives and husbands that they never got out of the perplexity, and the
+criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of woes,
+and this one got alimony, and that one got a limited divorce, and this
+mother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes
+come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went
+into an insane asylum, and those went into dissolute public life, and
+all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the
+marriage institution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one
+name and sometimes under another.
+
+Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been
+
+
+POLYGAMY IN UTAH.
+
+That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has
+poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an
+arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be
+sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of
+the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of
+America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress
+forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where
+they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five
+administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an
+army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked
+from that fortress of libertinism.
+
+Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the
+straw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in
+proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and
+in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen,
+and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any
+time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did
+more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent
+administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and
+although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than
+the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk,
+talk, talk.
+
+I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have
+had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are
+crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already
+with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it
+smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation
+throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of
+iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north,
+south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
+
+Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in
+this country has been a
+
+
+PUSTULOUS LITERATURE,
+
+with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic
+wrongs, and infidelities, and massacres, and outrages, until it is a
+wonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on
+the subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and
+New York and all our cities reeking with the filth.
+
+"Now," say some, "we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear
+them out or correct them is by easy divorce." Well, before we yield to
+that cry, let us find out
+
+
+HOW EASY IT IS NOW.
+
+I have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while
+in some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy.
+The State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of
+proper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts
+the right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it
+expedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that
+in one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833
+divorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look
+over the records of the States. In Massachusetts 600 divorces in one
+year; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces in one
+year; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New
+England in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England
+20,000. Is that not easy enough?
+
+If the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and
+multiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our
+courts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you
+will have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in
+the middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a
+woman will be that her husband's overcoat was buttonless. Causes of
+divorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England,
+and doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have
+to tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces
+to marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to
+thirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?
+
+I want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with
+the dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one
+case of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the
+reign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know
+how rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the
+Reign of Terror was introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce
+in one year in Paris.
+
+
+WHAT WE WANT
+
+in this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more
+and more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will
+be persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except
+through the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge
+of that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and
+that it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more
+marriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with
+the idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can
+get out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken
+out of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more
+joking about the blossoms in a bride's hair than about the cypress on
+a coffin.
+
+What we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present
+session move for the changing the national Constitution so that a law
+can be passed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what
+shall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what
+is wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.
+
+
+HOW IS IT NOW?
+
+If a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only
+necessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the
+domestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party
+knows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody,
+on April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of
+the household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a
+business excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride's house. No cards.
+There are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the
+disintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States,
+like our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making
+marriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.
+
+The Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session
+for a change of the National Constitution, and then to appoint a
+committee--not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and
+their families in Washington--who shall prepare a good, honest,
+righteous, comprehensive,
+
+
+UNIFORM LAW
+
+that will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will
+put an end to brokerages in marriage. That will send divorce lawyers
+into a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years
+on the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning
+how they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable
+circumstances.
+
+More difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon
+marriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the
+relation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The
+female to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly
+unattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody
+knows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through
+the commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how
+much estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out
+how long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can
+stand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the
+relation; for he says, "If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce
+law I'll back out." That process is going on all the time, and men
+enter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection,
+and it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that
+transpired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and
+Lackawanna.
+
+Now, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he
+goes into that relation there is no possibility of his getting out,
+or no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.
+He should say to himself, "Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a
+whole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of
+sunshine and gardens of peace."
+
+Rigorous divorce law will also hinder women from
+
+
+THE FATAL MISTAKE
+
+of marrying men to reform them. If a young man by twenty-five years of
+age or thirty years of age has the habit of strong drink fixed on him,
+he is as certainly bound for a drunkard's grave as that a train
+starting out from Grand Central Depot at 8 o'clock to-morrow morning
+is bound for Albany. The train may not reach Albany, for it may be
+thrown from the track. The young man may not reach a drunkard's grave,
+for something may throw him off the iron track of evil habit; but the
+probability is that the train that starts to-morrow morning at 8
+o'clock for Albany will get there and the probability is that the
+young man who has the habit of strong drink fixed on him before
+twenty-five or thirty years of age will arrive at a drunkard's grave.
+She knows he drinks, although he tries to hide it by chewing cloves.
+Everybody knows he drinks. Parents warn, neighbors and friends warn.
+She will marry him, she will reform him.
+
+If she is unsuccessful in the experiment, why then the divorce law
+will emancipate her, because habitual drunkenness is a cause for
+divorce in Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, and nearly all the
+States. So the poor thing goes to the altar of sacrifice. If you will
+show me the poverty-struck streets in any city I will show you the
+homes of the women who married men to reform them. In one case out of
+ten thousand it may be a successful experiment. I never saw the
+successful experiment. But have a rigorous divorce law, and that woman
+will say, "If I am affianced to that man it is for life; and if now in
+the ardor of his young love, and I am the prize to be won, he will not
+give up his cups, when he has won the prize, surely he will not give
+up his cups." And so that woman will say to the man, "No, sir, you are
+already married to the club, and you are married to that evil habit,
+and so you are married twice, and you are a bigamist. Go!"
+
+A rigorous divorce law will also do much to hinder hasty and
+
+
+INCONSIDERATE MARRIAGES.
+
+Under the impression that one can be easily released people enter the
+relation without inquiry and without reflection. Romance and impulse
+rule the day. Perhaps the only ground for the marriage compact is that
+she likes his looks and he admires the graceful way she passes around
+the ice cream at the picnic! It is all they know about each other. It
+is all the preparation for life. A man not able to pay his own board
+bill, with not a dollar in his possession, will stand at the altar and
+take the loving hand, and say, "With all my worldly goods I thee
+endow!" A woman that could not make a loaf of bread to save her life
+will swear to cherish and obey. A Christian will marry an atheist, and
+that always makes conjoined wretchedness; for if a man does not
+believe there is a God, he is neither to be trusted with a dollar nor
+with your lifelong happiness.
+
+Having read much about love in a cottage people brought up in ease
+will go and starve in a hovel. Runaway matches and elopements, 999 out
+of 1000 of which mean death and hell, multiplying on all hands. You
+see them in every day's newspapers. Our ministers in this region have
+no defence such as they have in other cities where the banns must be
+previously published and an officer of the law must give a certificate
+that all is right; so clergymen are left defenceless, and unite those
+who ought never to be united. Perhaps they are too young or perhaps
+they are standing already in some domestic compact.
+
+By the wreck of ten thousand homes, by the holocaust of ten thousand
+sacrificed men and women, by the hearthstone of the family which is
+the corner-stone of the State, and in the name of that God who hath
+set up the family institution and who hath made the breaking of the
+marital oath the most appalling of all perjuries, I implore the
+Congress of the United States to make some righteous, uniform law for
+all the States and from ocean to ocean, on this subject of marriage
+and divorce.
+
+
+ADVICE TO LOVERS.
+
+Let me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning,
+before you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution;
+inquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the
+taste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take
+the heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put
+your lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation
+for being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who
+dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God
+wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more
+celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that
+Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.
+Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has
+been or ever will be, is good character.
+
+
+ASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL
+
+in this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They
+are the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you
+than any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your
+happiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,
+
+
+ASK GOD.
+
+I used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about
+to offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong
+companion, he opened the conversation by saying, "Let us pray." But I
+have seen so many shipwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up
+my mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in
+prayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and
+poverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all
+the path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with
+its wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last
+farewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam
+and Eve, parted.
+
+And let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or
+woman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to
+the Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through
+difference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your
+mind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear,
+remembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who
+have been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and
+immediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green grass on
+quiet graves. And perhaps, my brother, my sister, perhaps you may
+appreciate each other better in heaven than you have appreciated each
+other on earth.
+
+In the "Farm Ballads" our American poet puts into the lips of a
+repentant husband after a life of married perturbation these
+suggestive words:
+
+    "And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,
+    And lying together in silence, perhaps we will agree.
+    And if ever we meet in heaven, I would not think it queer
+    If we love each other better because we quarrelled here."
+
+And let me say to those of you who are in happy married union,
+
+
+AVOID FIRST QUARRELS;
+
+have no unexplained correspondence with former admirers; cultivate no
+suspicions; in a moment of bad temper do not rush out and tell the
+neighbors; do not let any of those gad-abouts of society unload in
+your house their baggage of gab and tittle-tattle; do not stand on
+your rights; learn how to apologize; do not be so proud, or so
+stubborn, or so devilish that you will not make up. Remember that the
+worst domestic misfortunes and most scandalous divorce cases started
+from little infelicities. The whole piled-up train of ten rail cars
+telescoped and smashed at the foot of an embankment one hundred feet
+down came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the
+track. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest
+resounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings
+that were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability,
+and religion, and immortal soul went down in the crash, crash!
+
+And, fellow-citizens as well as fellow-Christians, let us have a
+divine rage against anything that wars on the marriage state. Blessed
+institution! Instead of two arms to fight the battle of life, four.
+Instead of two eyes to scrutinize the path of life, four. Instead of
+two shoulders to lift the burden of life, four. Twice the energy,
+twice the courage, twice the holy ambition, twice the probability of
+worldly success, twice the prospects of heaven. Into that matrimonial
+bower God fetches two souls. Outside the bower room for all
+contentions, and all bickerings, and all controversies, but inside
+that bower there is room for only one guest--the angel of love. Let
+that angel stand at the floral doorway of this Edenic bower with drawn
+sword to hew down the worst foe of that bower--easy divorce. And for
+every Paradise lost may there be a Paradise regained. And after we
+quit our home here may we have a brighter home in heaven at the
+windows of which this moment are familiar faces watching for our
+arrival and wondering why so long we tarry.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Dr. Talmage, in common with many critics, here censures Mr. James
+Anthony Froude for making the disclosures. It is, however, due to that
+eminent historian to say that he gives a different explanation of his
+motives than that suggested by Dr. Talmage of a regard for "shekels." He
+states that as Mr. Carlyle had selected him as his biographer and given
+the materials for the work into his hands, he conceived that his duty as
+a conscientious man was to tell the whole truth. He did it also as a
+matter of policy as well as of principle. Had he kept back any part, it
+would have been told with less accuracy by others who knew some of the
+facts but not all of them.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MATERNITY.
+
+    "Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to
+    him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to
+    offer the yearly sacrifice."--I SAMUEL 2:19.
+
+
+The stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt to discourage a
+woman's soul. She says within herself: "It is impossible that I ever
+can achieve any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean to try;"
+as though a child should refuse to play the eight notes because he
+cannot execute a "William Tell." This Hannah of the text differs from
+the persons I just now named. She was an ordinary woman, with ordinary
+intellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circumstances, and yet,
+by extraordinary piety, standing out before all the ages to come.
+
+
+THE MODEL CHRISTIAN MOTHER.
+
+Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a person very much like
+herself--unromantic and plain, never having fought a battle or been
+the subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them would have been
+called a genius. Just what you and I might be, that was Elkanah and
+Hannah. The brightest time in all the history of that family was the
+birth of Samuel. Although no star ran along the heavens pointing down
+to his birthplace, I think the angels of God stooped at the coming of
+so wonderful a prophet.
+
+As Samuel had been given in answer to prayer, Elkanah and all his
+family, save Hannah, started up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices of
+thanksgiving. The cradle where the child slept was altar enough for
+Hannah's grateful heart, but when the boy was old enough she took him
+to Shiloh and took three bullocks, and an ephah of flour, and a bottle
+of wine, and made offering of sacrifice unto the Lord, and there,
+according to a previous vow, she left him; for there he was to stay
+all the days of his life, and minister in the tabernacle.
+
+Years rolled on, and every year Hannah made with her own hands a
+garment for Samuel, and took it over to him. The lad would have got
+along well without that garment, for I suppose he was well clad by the
+ministry of the temple; but Hannah could not be contented unless she
+was all the time doing something for her darling boy. "Moreover his
+mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to
+year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly
+sacrifice."
+
+I. Hannah stands before you, then, in the first place, as
+
+
+AN INDUSTRIOUS MOTHER.
+
+There was no need for her to work. Elkanah, her husband, was far from
+poor. He belonged to a distinguished family; for the Bible tells us
+that he was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the
+son of Zuph. "Who were they?" you say. I do not know; but they were
+distinguished people, no doubt, or their names would not have been
+mentioned.
+
+Hannah might have seated herself with her family, and, with folded
+arms and dishevelled hair, read novels from year to year, if there had
+been any to read; but when I see her making that garment, and taking
+it over to Samuel, I know she is industrious from principle as well as
+from pleasure. God would not have a mother become a drudge or a slave;
+He would have her employ all the helps possible in this day in the
+rearing of her children. But Hannah ought never to be ashamed to be
+found making a coat for Samuel.
+
+Most mothers need no counsel in this direction. The wrinkles on their
+brow, the pallor on their cheek, the thimble-mark on their finger,
+attest that they are faithful in their maternal duties. The bloom, and
+the brightness, and the vivacity of girlhood have given place for the
+grander dignity, and usefulness, and industry of motherhood. But there
+is
+
+
+A HEATHENISH IDEA
+
+getting abroad in some of the families of Americans; there are mothers
+who banish themselves from the home circle. For three fourths of their
+maternal duties they prove themselves incompetent. They are ignorant
+of what their children wear, and what their children eat, and what
+their children read. They intrust to irresponsible persons these young
+immortals, and allow them to be under influences which may cripple
+their bodies, or taint their purity, or spoil their manners, or
+destroy their souls.
+
+From the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you know his mother Hannah did not
+make it. Out from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported
+carpets, and down the granite stairs, there has come a great crowd of
+children in this day, untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical
+duties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl of crime and
+sensuality. Indolent and unfaithful mothers will make indolent and
+unfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in any house
+where the daughters see nothing but slatternness and upsidedownativeness
+in their parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly Samuel will
+grow up idle.
+
+Who are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions?
+Who are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the
+walls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets, making the laws,
+governing the nations, making the earth to quake, and heave, and roar,
+and rattle with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are they? For
+the most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old
+homestead, used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own carpets,
+and plait their own door-mats, and flag their own chairs, and do their
+own work. The stalwart men and the
+
+
+INFLUENTIAL WOMEN
+
+of this day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came from such an
+illustrious ancestry of hard knuckles and homespun.
+
+And who are these people in society, light as froth, blown every
+whither of temptation and fashion--the peddlers of filthy stories, the
+dancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the
+tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of low wink, and filthy
+chuckle, and brass breast-pins, and rotten associations? For the most
+part, they came from mothers idle and disgusting--the scandal-mongers
+of society, going from house to house, attending to everybody's
+business but their own, believing in witches, and ghosts, and
+horseshoes to keep the devil out of the churn, and by a godless life
+setting their children on the very verge of hell. The mothers of
+Samuel Johnson, and of Alfred the Great, and Isaac Newton, and of St.
+Augustine, and of Richard Cecil, and of President Edwards, for the
+most part were industrious, hard-working mothers.
+
+Now, while I congratulate all Christian mothers upon the wealth and
+the modern science which may afford them all kinds of help, let me say
+that every mother ought to be observant of her children's walk, her
+children's behavior, her children's food, her children's looks, her
+children's companionships. However much help Hannah may have, I think
+she ought every year, at least, make one garment for Samuel. The Lord
+have mercy on the man who is so unfortunate as to have had a lazy
+mother!
+
+II. Again, Hannah stands before you as
+
+
+AN INTELLIGENT MOTHER.
+
+From the way in which she talked in this chapter, and from the way she
+managed this boy, you know she was intelligent. There are no persons
+in the community who need to be so wise and well-informed as mothers.
+
+Oh, this work of culture in children for this world and the next! This
+child is timid, and it must be roused up and pushed out into
+activity. This child is forward, and he must be held back and tamed
+down into modesty and politeness. Rewards for one, punishments for
+another. That which will make George will ruin John. The rod is
+necessary in one case, while a frown of displeasure is more than
+enough in another. Whipping and a dark closet do not exhaust all the
+rounds of domestic discipline. There have been children who have grown
+up and gone to glory without ever having had their ears boxed.
+
+Oh, how much care and intelligence are necessary in the rearing of
+children! But in this day, when there are so many books on the
+subject, no parent is excusable in being ignorant of the best mode of
+
+
+BRINGING UP A CHILD.
+
+If parents knew more of dietetics there would not be so many dyspeptic
+stomachs and weak nerves and inactive livers among children. If
+parents knew more of physiology there would not be so many curved
+spines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as
+there are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in
+sympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many
+children coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents
+knew more of Christ, and practised more of His religion, there would
+not be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all
+around us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such
+ecstasy of infernal triumph.
+
+The eaglets in the eyrie have no advantages over the eaglets of a
+thousand years ago; the kids have no superior way of climbing up the
+rocks than the old goats taught hundreds of years ago; the whelps know
+no more now than did the whelps of ages ago--they are taught no more
+by the lions of the desert; but it is a shame that in this day, when
+there are so many opportunities of improving ourselves in the best
+manner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more
+advancement in this respect than there has been among the kids and the
+eaglets and the whelps.
+
+III. Again, Hannah stands before you as
+
+
+A CHRISTIAN MOTHER.
+
+From her prayers and from the way she consecrated her boy to God, I
+know that she was good. A mother may have the finest culture, the most
+brilliant surroundings; but she is not fit for her duties unless she
+be a Christian mother. There may be well-read libraries in the house,
+and exquisite music in the parlor, and the canvases of the best
+artists adorning the walls, and the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful
+apparel, and the children be wonderful for their attainments, and
+make the house ring with laughter and innocent mirth, but there is
+something woeful-looking in that house if it be not also the residence
+of a Christian mother.
+
+I bless God that there are not many prayerless mothers--not many of
+them. The weight of the responsibility is so great that they feel the
+need of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a
+divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into
+the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were
+hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been
+for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the
+nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to
+raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a
+Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian?
+Lord, help me!" Are there
+
+
+ANXIOUS MOTHERS
+
+who know nothing of the infinite help of religion? Then I commend to
+them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely
+impossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such
+fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime
+gets its victims--extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out
+the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and
+shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding
+and blasting and burning with shame and woe.
+
+Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that
+child shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal
+harmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of
+joy in heaven; or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and,
+after a life of wrong-doing on earth, it shall go to a home of
+impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being
+decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson and evening prayer and walk
+and ride and look and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory,
+crowding all the battlements, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna,
+brought to God through Christian parentage!
+
+One hundred and twenty clergymen were together, and they were telling
+their experience and their ancestry; and of the one hundred and twenty
+clergymen, how many of them, do you suppose, assigned as the means of
+their conversion the influence of a Christian mother? One hundred out
+of the one hundred and twenty! Philip Doddridge was brought to God by
+the Scripture lesson on the Dutch tiles of a chimney fireplace. The
+mother thinks she is only rocking a child, but at the same time she
+may be rocking the fate of nations, rocking the glories of heaven. The
+same maternal power that may lift the child up may press a child down.
+
+A daughter came to
+
+
+A WORLDLY MOTHER
+
+and said she was anxious about her sins, and she had been praying all
+night. The mother said: "Oh, stop praying! I don't believe in praying.
+Get over all these religious notions and I'll give you a dress that
+will cost $500, and you may wear it next week to that party." The
+daughter took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle the gayest of
+all the gay, that night; and sure enough all the religious impressions
+were gone and she stopped praying. A few months after she came to die,
+and in her closing moments said: "Mother, I wish you would bring me
+that dress that cost $500." The mother thought it a very strange
+request, but she brought it to please the dying child. "Now," said the
+daughter, "mother, hang that dress on the foot of my bed," and the
+dress was hung there, on the foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got
+up on one elbow and looked at her mother, and then pointed to the
+dress, and said: "Mother, that dress is the price of my soul." Oh,
+what a momentous thing it is to be a mother!
+
+IV. Again, and lastly, Hannah stands before you
+
+
+THE REWARDED MOTHER.
+
+For all the coats she made for Samuel, for all the prayers she offered
+for him, for the discipline exerted over him she got abundant
+compensation in the piety and the usefulness and the popularity of her
+son Samuel; and that is true in all ages. Every mother gets full pay
+for all the prayers and tears in behalf of her children. That man
+useful in commercial life; that man prominent in a profession; that
+master mechanic--why, every step he takes in life has an echo of
+gladness in the old heart that long ago taught him to be a Christian,
+and heroic and earnest.
+
+The story of what you have done, or what you have written, of the
+influence you exerted, has gone back to the old homestead--for there
+is some one always ready to carry good tidings--and that story makes
+the needle in the old mother's tremulous hand fly quicker, and the
+flail in the father's hand come down on the barn floor with a vigorous
+thump. Parents love to hear good news from their children. Do you send
+them good news always?
+
+Look out for the young man who speaks of his father as "the governor,"
+the "squire," or the "old chap." Look out for the young woman who
+calls her mother her "maternal ancestor," or the "old woman." "The eye
+that mocketh at his father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it."
+
+God grant that all these parents may have the great satisfaction of
+seeing their children grow up Christians. But, oh! the pang of that
+mother, who, after a life of street gadding and gossip retailing,
+hanging on the children the fripperies and follies of this world, sees
+those children tossed out on the sea of life like foam on the wave, or
+nonentities in a world where only bravery and stalwart character can
+stand the shock! But blessed be the mother who looks upon her children
+as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
+
+Oh! the satisfaction of Hannah in seeing Samuel serving at the altar;
+of Mother Eunice in seeing her Timothy learned in the Scriptures. That
+is the mother's recompense, to see children coming up useful in the
+world, reclaiming the lost, healing the sick, pitying the ignorant,
+earnest and useful in every sphere. That throws a new light back on
+the old family Bible whenever she reads it, and that will be ointment
+to soothe the aching limbs of decrepitude, and light up the closing
+hours of life's day with the glories of an autumnal sunset!
+
+There she sits,
+
+
+THE OLD CHRISTIAN MOTHER,
+
+ripe for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the
+celestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn
+has struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the
+wrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care
+she used to carry for her children. She sits at home, too old to find
+her way to the house of God; but while she sits there, all the past
+comes back, and the children that forty years ago tripped around her
+armchair with their griefs and joys and sorrows--those children are
+gone now. Some caught up into a better realm, where they shall never
+die, and others out in the broad world, testing the excellency of a
+Christian mother's discipline. Her last days are full of peace; and
+calmer and sweeter will her spirit become, until the gates of life
+shall lift and let in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide and
+youth, where the limbs never ache, and the eyes never grow dim, and
+the staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm
+of the immortal athlete!
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.
+
+    "Whose son art thou, thou young man?"--SAMUEL 17:58.
+
+
+Never was there a more unequal fight than that between David and
+Goliath. David five feet high; Goliath ten. David a shepherd boy,
+brought up amid rural scenes; Goliath a warrior by profession. Goliath
+a mountain of braggadocia; David a marvel of humility. Goliath armed
+with an iron spear; David armed with a sling with smooth stones from
+the brook. But you are not to despise these latter weapons. There was
+a regiment of slingers in the Assyrian army and a regiment of slingers
+in the Egyptian army, and they made terrible execution, and they could
+cast a stone with as much precision and force as now can be hurled
+shot or shell. The Greeks in their army had slingers who would throw
+leaden plummets inscribed with the irritating words: "Take this!" So
+it was a mighty weapon David employed in that famous combat.
+
+A Jewish rabbi says that the probability is that Goliath was in such
+contempt for David, that in a paroxysm of laughter he threw his head
+back, and his helmet fell off, and David saw the uncovered forehead,
+and his opportunity had come, and taking his sling and swinging it
+around his head two or three times, and aiming at that uncovered
+forehead, he crushed it in like an egg-shell. The battle over,
+
+
+BEHOLD A TABLEAU:
+
+King Saul sitting, little David standing, his fingers clutched into
+the hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there
+holding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of
+the complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what
+parentage was honored by such heroism, and in my text he asks David
+his pedigree: "Whose son art thou, thou young man?"
+
+The king saw what you and I see, that this question of heredity is a
+mighty question. The longer I live the more
+
+
+I BELIEVE IN BLOOD
+
+--good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble blood, honest blood,
+thieving blood, heroic blood, cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a
+generation or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a little child
+you sometimes see a similarity to a great-grandfather whose picture
+hangs on the wall. That the physical and mental and moral qualities
+are inheritable is patent to any one who keeps his eyes open. The
+similarity is so striking sometimes as to be amusing. Great families,
+regal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down
+through the generations, and what is more perceptible in such families
+may be seen on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand years have
+no power to obliterate the difference.
+
+
+ROYAL RASCALS.
+
+The large lip of the House of Austria is seen in all the generations,
+and is called the Hapsburg lip. The House of Stuart always means in
+all generations cruelty and bigotry and sensuality. Witness Queen of
+Scotts. Witness Charles I. and Charles II. Witness James I. and James
+II. and all the other scoundrels of that imperial line.
+
+Scottish blood means persistence, English blood means reverence for
+the ancient, Welsh blood means religiosity, Danish blood means
+fondness for the sea, Indian blood means roaming disposition, Celtic
+blood means fervidity, Roman blood means conquest.
+
+The Jewish facility for accumulation you may trace clear back to
+Abraham, of whom the Bible says "he was rich in silver and gold and
+cattle," and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same
+
+
+FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+Some families are characterized by longevity, and they have a tenacity
+of life positively Methuselahish. Others are characterized by
+Goliathian stature, and you can see it for one generation, two
+generations, five generations, in all the generations. Vigorous
+theology runs on in the line of the Alexanders. Tragedy runs on in the
+family of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of the
+Trollopes. Philanthropy runs on in the line of the Wilberforces.
+Statesmanship runs on in the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catharine
+of Navarre religious, all their families religious. The celebrated
+family of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the
+Medici--grandfather, son and Catharine--all remarkable for keen
+intellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.
+
+This law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or
+political condition, for you sometimes find the ignoble in high place
+and the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll
+gatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door-keeper. A descendant of
+the Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest
+families of England are extinct, while some of those most honored in
+the peerage go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough
+exterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or
+political condition.
+
+Then you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having
+full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William
+is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be
+set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you
+not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the
+generation of the righteous," of "the generation of vipers," of an
+"untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of
+the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
+generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a
+projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son art thou, thou
+young man?"
+
+"Well," says some one, "that theory discharges me from all
+responsibility. Born of sanctified parents we are bound to be good and
+we cannot help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage we are bound
+to be evil and we cannot help ourselves."
+
+
+TWO INACCURACIES.
+
+As much as if you should say, "The centripetal force in nature has a
+tendency to bring everything to the centre, and therefore all things
+come to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to
+throw out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will
+go out to the periphery." You know as well as I know that you can make
+the centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the
+centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide
+of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as
+in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President
+Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the
+scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian
+ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of
+this day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not
+be courteous to speak in their presence.
+
+
+YOUR DUTY.
+
+The practical and useful object of this sermon is to show to you that
+if you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound
+to preserve and develop the glorious inheritance; or if you have come
+of a depraved ancestry, then it is your duty to brace yourself against
+the evil tendency by all prayer and Christian determination, and you
+are to find out what are the family frailties, and in arming the
+castle put the strongest guard at the weakest gate. With these smooth
+stones from the brook I hope to strike you, not where David struck
+Goliath, in the head, but where Nathan struck David, in the heart.
+"Whose son art thou, thou young man?"
+
+There is something in the periodical holidays to bring up
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS.
+
+Sometime in the winter holiday, when we are accustomed to gather our
+families together, old times have come back again, and our thoughts
+have been set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." The old folks were so
+busy at such times in making us happy, and perhaps on less resource
+made their sons and daughters happier than you on larger resource are
+able to make your sons and daughters happy. The snow lay two feet
+above their graves, but they shook off the white blankets and mingled
+in the holiday festivities--the same wrinkles, the same stoop of
+shoulder under the weight of age, the same old style of dress or coat,
+the same smile, the same tones of voice. I hope you remember them
+before they went away. If not, I hope there are those who have recited
+to you what they were, and that there may be in your house some
+article of dress or furniture with which you associate their memories.
+I want to arouse the most sacred memories of your heart while I make
+the impassioned interrogatory in regard to your pedigree: "Whose son
+art thou, thou young man?"
+
+I. First, I accost all those who are descended of a
+
+
+CHRISTIAN ANCESTRY.
+
+I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people
+now, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps
+there was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised
+you. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved,
+and perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But
+you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.
+From what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the
+family altar and at neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had
+invited God into their heart and life. There was something that
+sustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about
+their destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as
+certainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+That early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when
+you got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the
+fresh air because you thought your mother was looking at you. You
+have never been very happy in sin because of a sweet old face that
+would present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you
+until they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who
+spoke. There was an estate not mentioned in the last will and
+testament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian
+entreaty and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to
+hear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold,
+and it was share and share alike. But there was
+
+
+AN UNWRITTEN WILL
+
+that read something like this: "In the name of God, Amen. I, being of
+sound mind, bequeath to my children all my prayers for their
+salvation; I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's toil; I
+bequeath to them the Christian religion which has been so much comfort
+to me, and I hope may be solace for them; I bequeath to them a hope of
+reunion when the partings of life are over; share and share alike may
+they have in eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that they may
+avoid my errors and copy anything that may have been worthy. In the
+name of the God who made me, and the Christ who redeemed me, and the
+Holy Ghost who sanctifies me, I make this my last will and testament.
+Witness, all ye hosts of heaven. Witness, time, witness, eternity.
+Signed, sealed, and delivered in this our dying hour. Father and
+Mother."
+
+You did not get that will proved at the surrogate's office; but I take
+it out to-day and I read it to you; I take it out of the alcoves of
+your heart; I shake the dust off it, I ask you will you accept that
+inheritance, or will you break the will? O ye of Christian ancestry,
+you have a responsibility vast beyond all measurement! God will not
+let you off with just being as good as ordinary people when you had
+such extraordinary advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a
+hot-house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm?
+Ought not a factory turned by the Housatonic do more work than a
+factory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought not you of
+great early opportunity be better than those who had a cradle
+unblessed?
+
+
+THE CAPITAL ACCOUNT.
+
+A father sets his son up in business. He keeps an account of all the
+expenditures. So much for store fixtures, so much for rent, so much
+for this, so much for that, and all the items aggregated, and the
+father expects the son to give an account. Your heavenly Father
+charges against you all the advantages of a pious ancestry--so many
+prayers, so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties--all these
+gracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an
+account of it.
+
+Ought not you to be better than those who had no such advantages?
+Better have been a foundling picked up off the city commons than with
+such magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn out
+indifferently.
+
+Ought not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture,
+than that man who can truly say this morning: "The first word I
+remember my father speaking to me was an oath; the first time I
+remember my father taking hold of me was in wrath; I never saw a Bible
+till I was ten years of age, and then I was told it was a pack of
+lies. The first twenty years of my life I was associated with the
+vicious. I seemed to be walled in by sin and death." Now, my brother,
+ought you not--I leave it as a matter of fairness with you--ought you
+not to be far better than those who had no early Christian influence?
+
+Standing as you do between the generation that is past and the
+generation that is to come, are you going to pass the blessing on, or
+are you going to have your life the gulf in which that tide of
+blessing shall drop out of sight forever? You are
+
+
+THE TRUSTEE OF PIETY
+
+in that ancestral line, and are you going to augment or squander that
+solemn trust fund? are you going to disinherit your sons and daughters
+of the heirloom which your parents left you? Ah! that cannot be
+possible, that cannot be possible that you are going to take such a
+position as that. You are very careful about the life insurances, and
+careful about the deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful
+about the title of your property, because when you step off the stage
+you want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision that
+they shall get grandfather and grandmother's religion? Oh, what a last
+will and testament you are making, my brother! "In the name of God,
+Amen. I, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. I
+bequeath to my children all the money I ever made and all the houses I
+own; but I disinherit them, I rob them of the ancestral grace and the
+Christian influence that I inherited. I have squandered that on my own
+worldliness. Share and share alike must they in the misfortune and the
+everlasting outrage. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of
+God and men and angels and devils and all the generations of earth
+and heaven and hell, March, 1886."
+
+O ye of highly favored ancestry, wake up this morning to a sense of
+your opportunity and your responsibility. I think there must be
+
+
+AN OLD CRADLE,
+
+or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of
+midnight supplication in your behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair
+in which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is
+the old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that
+awful night when there were but three of you awake--you and God and
+mother? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old
+family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: "My son,
+my daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us
+all our lives and to whom we commended you in our prayers living and
+dying? By the memory of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our
+dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our
+spirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf for the new year."
+Oh, the power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a young man of
+New York who attended a prayer-meeting one night and asked for
+prayer, and then went home and wrote down these words:
+
+
+AN ENTRY IN A DIARY.
+
+"Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother went to heaven, my
+beautiful, blessed mother, and I have been alone, tossed up and down
+upon the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I ever go to
+heaven? She told me I must meet her in heaven. When she took her boy's
+hand in hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me, and gazed
+earnestly and long into my face, and then lifted them to heaven in
+that last prayer, she prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder
+if I ever shall.
+
+"My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed mother's prayers! Did ever
+boy have such a mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have not
+heard her pray until to-night. I have heard all her prayers over
+again. They have had, in fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she
+was wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so
+importunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a
+Christian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a
+cheerful and happy Christian. There is
+
+
+"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.
+
+"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect
+her precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.
+How often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain
+for your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in
+vain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much
+instruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to
+heaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
+trusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never
+doubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
+mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made
+myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a
+Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of
+existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no
+rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all
+away from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish."
+
+Do you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:
+"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and
+goodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and all I am I
+consecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?" Oh, the power of
+ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!
+
+II. But I turn for a moment to those who had
+
+
+EVIL PARENTAGE,
+
+and I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven and the
+mightiest triumphs and the brightest crowns will be for those who had
+evil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as
+splendid a gentleman as I know of to-day had for father a man who died
+blaspheming God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their
+ears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful
+Christian ministers of to-day was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide
+of evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and
+yet men have clung to a rock and been rescued.
+
+There is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many
+millions that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate sent
+back a paper of tacks because they were two cents more than he
+expected. Grip and grind and gouge in the fourth generation--I suppose
+it will be grip and grind and gouge in the twentieth generation. The
+thirst for intoxicants has burned down through the arteries of a
+hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other
+families. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes another form of evil.
+But
+
+
+IT MAY BE RESISTED,
+
+it has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate
+unselfishness and charity, and teach your children never to eat an
+apple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty
+combativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and
+never answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred
+both ways, and after you have written an angry letter keep it a week
+before you send it, and then burn it up! Is the family frailty
+timidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography of
+brave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you cannot get a little iron
+in your blood. Find out what the family frailty is, and set body, mind
+and soul in battle array.
+
+
+CONQUER YOUR WILL.
+
+I think the genealogical table was put in the first chapter of the New
+Testament, not only to show our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a
+man may rise up in an ancestral line and beat back successfully all
+the influences of bad heredity. See in that genealogical table that
+good King Asa came of vile King Abia. See in that genealogical table
+that Joseph and Mary and the most illustrious Being that ever touched
+our world, or ever will touch it, had in their ancestral line
+scandalous Rehoboam and Tamar and Bathsheba. If this world is ever to
+be Edenized--and it will be--all the infected families of the earth
+are to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each family
+line and open a new genealogical table. There will be some Joseph in
+the line to reverse the evil influence of Rehoboam, and there will be
+some Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence of Bathsheba.
+Perhaps the star of hope may point down to your manger. Perhaps you
+are to be the hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes and
+stop that long train of genealogical tendencies and switch it off on
+another track from that on which it has been running for a century.
+You do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace as the architects
+of heaven can build, the archway inscribed with the words: "More than
+conqueror."
+
+
+ADOPTED CHILDREN.
+
+But whatever your heredity, let me say, you may be sons and daughters
+of the Lord God Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come
+back through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in our
+veins. There are crowns in our escutcheon. Our Father is King. Our
+Brother is King. We may be kings and queens unto God forever. Come and
+sit down on the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in the
+fountains that fall into the basins of crystal and alabaster. Come and
+look out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and
+amaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while you banquet with
+potentates and victors. Oh, when the text sweeps backward, let it not
+stop at the cradle that rocked your infancy, but at the cradle that
+rocked the first world, and when the text sweeps forward, let it not
+stop at your grave, but at the throne on which you may reign forever
+and ever! "Whose son art thou, thou young man?" Son of God! Heir of
+mortality! Take your inheritance!
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF ALL.
+
+    "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
+    slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh
+    instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from
+    man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man."--GENESIS
+    2:21, 22.
+
+
+It is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever
+since sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings
+and scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and
+ornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air
+in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions
+walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday
+afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach
+all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this
+paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of
+
+
+A CORRESPONDING INTELLIGENCE
+
+just landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I
+speak--Eve, the first, the fairest and the best.
+
+I make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border
+them with pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and
+there are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple
+under the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon,
+and orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There
+are woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred
+spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees
+the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the
+brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp
+and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and
+death as compared with
+
+
+THE RESIDENCE OF THE WOMAN
+
+of the text, the subject of my morning story. Never since have such
+skies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has
+river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the
+Havilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddakel, even the pebbles being bdellium
+and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What
+flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost
+to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the
+grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's
+hum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness and love and joy.
+
+Right there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred
+
+
+THE FIRST MARRIAGE.
+
+Adam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and pronounced
+the ceremony when he said: "Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh."
+
+
+A FORBIDDEN TREE
+
+stood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day
+alone looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders
+if it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says:
+"I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage
+to the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it
+down to examine it." She examined the fruit. She said: "I do not think
+there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it." She put the
+fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the
+fruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let
+the heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the
+hills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep,
+hell-rending howl:
+
+
+"THE WORLD IS LOST!"
+
+Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw, and
+sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds
+troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass.
+Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are
+snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents
+turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted
+myriads of a ruined race.
+
+Do you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated
+
+
+INQUISITIVENESS?
+
+She wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six
+thousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity. Healthy
+curiosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science and
+for religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the
+geologist and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of
+nature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the
+antiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried
+Herculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulchre there came up
+shaft and terrace and amphitheatre. Healthful curiosity has enlarged
+the telescopic vision of the astronomer until worlds hidden in the
+distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising
+the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassoed with
+resplendent law.
+
+
+HEALTHFUL CURIOSITY
+
+has gone down and found the tracks of the eternal God in the polypi
+and the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah
+encamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the
+spots on the sun, and the larvae in a beech leaf, and the light under
+fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from
+Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculae that make up the
+phosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and
+spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march
+of God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces
+that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and
+shuttles--forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the
+mountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and
+booms, with strange mechanism, and ships with nostrils of hot steam
+and yokes of fire draw the continents together.
+
+I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden
+jars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles, and
+other magnifying glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the
+natural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God
+for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the
+mechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zooelogical curiosity of
+Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that
+unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and
+tens of thousands into ruin.
+
+Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted,
+and that
+
+
+CURIOSITY BLASTED HER
+
+and blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by
+unhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole
+of God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all
+human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out
+of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or
+have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into
+ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from
+which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain
+
+
+TREES OF MYSTERY
+
+how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity,
+resurrection--in the discussion of these subjects hundreds and
+thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually
+been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not
+understand who Melchisedec was not!
+
+Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It
+is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the
+eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a
+falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About
+other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other
+people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are
+over anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they
+fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of
+tittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house
+Colonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever
+hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable
+secret, let him come and sacrifice it to
+
+
+THIS GODDESS OF SPLUTTER.
+
+Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not
+belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this
+computation of moral algebra: good sense plus good breeding, minus
+curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!
+
+Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm
+of
+
+
+FRENCH NOVELS,
+
+to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced
+them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They
+want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance
+while they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching
+themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering
+with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage
+healthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated
+curiosity.
+
+
+TREACHEROUS FRUIT.
+
+The subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits
+that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony.
+Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also
+to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand
+years of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that
+luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great
+wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but
+there is death at the bottom. Intoxication has great exhilaration for
+a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars
+where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich,
+and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the
+dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or
+is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands
+on the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is
+ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that
+crackle with all-consuming torture? "Rejoice, O young man, in thy
+youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know
+thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!"
+
+
+SWEET AT THE START,
+
+horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly
+mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the
+last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own
+image.
+
+"Aha! aha!" says the roystering inebriate; "this is joy for you; fill
+high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's
+rags and my God's defiance." And he knows not that a fiend stirs the
+goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust
+their forked tongues hissing through the froth on the rim.
+
+
+PERDITION BOUGHT FOR A SIXPENCE.
+
+The Philistines jeered and laughed and shouted at Samson. Oh, they
+wanted him to make sport for them, and he made sport for them! How
+bright and gay was the scene for a little while! After awhile the
+giant puts one hand against this pillar, and the other hand against
+this pillar, and bows himself, and three thousand merry-makers are
+mashed like grapes in a wine-press. Sin rapturous at the start, awful
+at the last.
+
+That one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a
+blow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a
+butcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you
+would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and
+display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the
+disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the
+wretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open
+all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic
+transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world
+and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues
+upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened like a
+leech famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at
+the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!
+
+And there are those who are
+
+
+VOTARIES OF PLEASURE.
+
+Let me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and
+your summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are
+loud voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with
+terror. You are past the "Narrows," and almost outside the "Hook," and
+if the Atlantic take thee, frail mortal, thou shalt never get to shore
+again. Put back, row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore
+casteth a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Oh, are there not some
+of you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a
+vessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? Thou nearest the
+breakers, one heave upon the rock. Oh, what an awful crash was that!
+Another lunge may crush thee beneath the spars or grind thy bones to
+powder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard!
+Trust not that loose plank nor attempt the move, but quickly clasp the
+feet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until He hear
+thee, "Lord, save me, or I perish." Sin beautiful at the start--oh,
+how sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads
+you is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The
+promise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen
+sword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous handwritings on
+the wall.
+
+
+HIDEOUS ATTRACTIVENESS.
+
+Observe also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to
+great attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such
+perfection of womanhood. You could not suggest an attractiveness to
+the body or suggest any refinement to the manner. You could add no
+gracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the
+voice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman to be the companion of a
+perfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in
+accord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against
+God's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the
+fruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults,
+that have set the universe a-wailing,
+
+
+A TERRIBLE OFFSET
+
+to all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and
+women naturally vulgar going into transgression. We expect that
+people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but
+how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to
+the refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of
+Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more
+appalling. The genius of Catharine II., of Russia, only sets forth in
+more powerful contrast her unappeasable ambition. The translations
+from the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful
+qualifications for a queen, made the more disgusting her
+capriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness
+of Byron's mind made the more alarming Byron's sensuality.
+
+Let no one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or
+exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise
+apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness,
+for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward
+can give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for vice
+hell deep.
+
+My subject also impresses me with the regal
+
+
+INFLUENCE OF WOMAN.
+
+When I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the
+generations that have followed, it suggests to me the great power all
+women have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you,
+with the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and
+the stage. They mean nothing, they are accepted as nothing. Woman's
+nobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence, and when I
+see this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole
+human race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a
+blow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons,
+or up among the thrones.
+
+Of course, I am not speaking of representative women--of Eve, who
+ruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike
+through the head of Sisera the warrior; of Esther, who overcame
+royalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess;
+of Mary, who nursed the world's Saviour; of Grandmother Lois,
+immortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove
+the dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie
+Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a
+mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I
+speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who,
+unambitious for political power, as
+
+
+WIVES AND MOTHERS
+
+and sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of
+home.
+
+When at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny
+of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence
+came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and
+sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for
+heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city;
+and the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the
+brother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the
+aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and
+mother down the steep of years. Need I go into history to find you
+illustrations? Ah no; in your own memory there was at least one such!
+When I come to speak of womanly influence, my mind always wanders off
+to
+
+
+ONE MODEL,
+
+the aged one who, twenty years ago, we put away for the resurrection.
+About eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father
+and mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New
+Jersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long
+life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her
+end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door and was turned
+empty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one
+asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When
+the angel of life came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to
+rejoice at the incarnation. When the angel of death came to a
+neighbor's dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial.
+
+We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of
+my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor,
+but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of thy comforting
+grace?" Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had
+but one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent
+missionary son; and when the ship from China anchored in New York
+harbor, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his
+paternal home, she said: "Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant depart
+in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The prayer was soon
+answered.
+
+It was an autumnal day very much like this when we gathered from afar
+and found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She
+looked very natural, the hands very much as when they were employed in
+kindness for her children. Whatever else we forget, we never forget
+the look of mother's hands. As we stood there by the casket, we could
+not help but say: "Don't she look beautiful?" It was a cloudless day
+when, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting-place.
+The withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and
+the sun shone on the Raritan River until it looked like fire; but more
+calm and beautiful and radiant was the setting sun of that aged
+pilgrim's life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more
+death. Dear mother! Beautiful mother!
+
+    "Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,
+    While the pure spirit rests with God."
+
+I need not go back and show you Zenobia or Semiramis or Isabella as
+wonders of womanly excellence or greatness, when I in this moment
+point to your own picture gallery of memory, and show you the one face
+that you remember so well, and arouse all your holy reminiscences, and
+start you in new consecration to God by the pronunciation of that
+tender, beautiful, glorious word, "Mother! mother!"
+
+
+
+
+SISTERLY INFLUENCE.
+
+    "And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to
+    him."--EXODUS 2:4.
+
+
+Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the
+lattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious
+boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have
+been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby
+boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America
+carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves
+of papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of
+that material, as we learn from Pliny, and Herodotus, and
+Theophrastus.
+
+
+MIRIAM'S VIGIL.
+
+"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born," had been Pharaoh's order. To
+save her son, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, had put him in
+that queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood on the bank
+watching that craft with its precious burden. She was far enough off
+not to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer
+protection. There she stands on the bank, Miriam the poetess, Miriam
+the quick-witted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after
+time she became so mad with that very brother for marrying a woman she
+did not like, that she made a great family row, and was struck with
+leprosy.
+
+Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults like all the rest of
+us. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A
+strong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a
+sudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water-fowl, might
+swoop, and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or
+hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might craunch the babe.
+Miriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each
+side of her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the
+sun, came down and entered her bathing-house. When from the lattice
+she saw that boat she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were
+pulled back from the face of the child and the boy looked up he cried
+aloud, for he was hungry and frightened, and would not even let the
+princess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than
+acknowledge any one of the court as mother.
+
+
+AN ADROIT MAIDEN.
+
+Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to
+the child, leaps from the bank and rushes down and offers to get a
+nurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings Jochebed, the
+baby's mother, incognito, not sure of the court knowing that she was
+the mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for
+its fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire
+Jochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my
+hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful, brilliant,
+and strategic sister!
+
+"Go home," someone might have said to Miriam. "Why risk yourself out
+there alone on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in
+danger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian; go home!" No;
+Miriam, the sister, most lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses,
+the brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty
+centuries of the world's history have never had so much involved in
+the arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus
+boat calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to be a non-such in
+history. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer,
+conqueror, deliverer.
+
+
+HEBREW LEGENDS.
+
+He had such remarkable beauty in childhood that Josephus says, when he
+was carried along the road, people stopped to gaze at him, and
+workmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully
+put his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his
+foot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child
+might yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the
+Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before the child,
+one containing rubies, and the other burning coals. And if he took the
+coals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he was to die. For
+some reason the child took one of the coals, and put it in his mouth,
+so that his life was spared, although it burned the tongue till he was
+indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread
+open the palms of his hands in prayer and the Red Sea parted to let
+two million five hundred thousand people escape. And he put the palms
+of his hands together in prayer and the Red Sea closed on a
+strangulated host.
+
+
+UNIQUE BURIAL.
+
+His life was unutterably grand, his burial must be on the same scale.
+God would let neither man nor saint nor archangel have anything to do
+with weaving for him a shroud or digging for him a grave. The
+omnipotent God left His throne in heaven one day, and if the question
+was asked, "Whither is the King of the Universe going?" the answer
+was, "I am going down to bury Moses." And the Lord took this mightiest
+of men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear, and Moses ran his
+eye over the magnificent range of country. Here, the valley of
+Esdraelon, where the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and
+yonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon, and Gerizim, and hills of
+Judea; and the village of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho
+yonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost took the old
+lawgiver's breath away as he looked at it.
+
+And then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye
+of Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the
+great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased;
+and his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: "To the skies,
+thou immortal spirit!" And then one divine hand was put against the
+back of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God
+laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in
+the Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed
+in crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into
+an everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only
+obsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, and undertaker,
+and grave-digger, and mourner were ended.
+
+
+THE WORLD INDEBTED.
+
+Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an
+important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of
+river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one
+passenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming
+eternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from
+the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought
+that wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to
+be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from
+the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the
+God-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house,
+would have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of
+her own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there
+been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for
+faithful sisterhood!
+
+For how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a
+deliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted
+to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the
+farm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuous homes! Come up from the
+banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the
+Mobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and
+let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in
+law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics
+and religion!
+
+If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants,
+and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and
+trades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and
+perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would
+rise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how
+much of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have
+gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother
+sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the
+banks of self-denial.
+
+
+THE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.
+
+Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers,
+are younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the
+brother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off
+from her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back
+water-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister
+decides the direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By
+gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it
+toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a
+brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even
+religion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
+peace.
+
+
+HER TOILSOME LIFE.
+
+The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the
+family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of
+her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my
+sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and
+getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time
+she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her
+attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity,
+and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an
+ungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.
+
+In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of
+births are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out
+with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last
+because she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that
+sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters
+who sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of
+the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon
+them will have to turn out to let them, pass.
+
+
+HELP TO MAKE MEN.
+
+Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It
+is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother
+can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses.
+There is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I
+tell you what your brother will be--either a blessing or a curse to
+society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like
+Moses, have the choice between rubies and living coals, and your
+influence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like
+Moses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and
+mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of
+homes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well
+invested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger
+brothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the
+day the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will
+come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, censorious,
+unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own
+irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his
+infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few
+years of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected
+back upon you some day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis
+where he would have failed but for you.
+
+
+TEASING A FAMILY CURSE.
+
+Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability. Don't talk
+discouragingly about his future. Don't let Miriam get down off the
+bank of the Nile, and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don't
+tease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease.
+That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most
+devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another
+form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and
+makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less
+blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your
+sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your
+brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the
+body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and
+lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of
+innumerable households that the brothers tease the sisters, and the
+sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the
+shape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by
+revealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an
+"Ahem!" Tease! Tease! Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says: "He
+that hateth his brother is a murderer." Now, when you, by teasing,
+make your brother or sister hate you, you turn him or her into a
+murderer or murderess.
+
+
+BEWARE OF JEALOUSY.
+
+Don't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as it so often does,
+because her brother gets more honor or more means. Even Miriam, the
+heroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She
+had possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and
+not only so but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so
+disgusted and outraged at Moses, first because he had married at all,
+and next, because he had practised miscegenation, that she is drawn
+into a frenzy, and then begins to turn white, and gets white as a
+corpse, and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk;
+the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom
+she had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that
+brings her restoration.
+
+Let there be no room in all your house for jealousy, either to sit or
+stand. It is a leprous abomination. Your brother's success, O sisters!
+is your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while
+Moses the brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Red
+Sea, Miriam, the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted
+and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the
+cymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was
+smothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian helmet went under.
+
+
+FAMILY QUARRELS.
+
+How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand
+together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling
+about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with
+their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery
+that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each
+other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age
+of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the
+same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave
+in the cemetery.
+
+
+THE ROTHSCHILDS.
+
+If you only knew it, your interests are identical. Of all the
+families of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most
+conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm
+Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about
+him, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise
+that they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction,
+they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the
+raising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen.
+That illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes,
+a united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude
+of dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary
+impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling!
+Sister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will
+lovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous
+disaster strike.
+
+
+THE FAMILY BOND.
+
+When father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have
+not already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the
+only ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for
+your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same
+cradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled for by the
+same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of
+all the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who
+started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and
+prosperity--I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the
+sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother
+will see that the sister never wants an escort.
+
+Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and
+damning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would
+hardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would
+make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest
+prayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of
+sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of
+the world, and the brother flee off in another direction in
+dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at
+the iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a
+consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living
+together for years, very often do not know each other, and that they
+see only the imperfections and none of the virtues!
+
+
+A RUSSIAN BANQUET.
+
+General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, had in early life wandered off
+in the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a
+fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a
+banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited
+a plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted,
+came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife
+were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general
+asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had
+two brothers and a sister. "No other brothers?" "My younger brother
+went off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago
+killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger
+brother whom he thought was dead." And how loud was the cheer, and how
+warm was the embrace!
+
+Brother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other
+as they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is
+grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud
+and unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some
+woman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man.
+That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in
+June. Come, let me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam." "Miriam,
+this is Moses." Add seventy-five per cent to your present
+appreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not
+stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you
+hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have
+all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.
+
+
+BE AGREEABLE.
+
+Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible,
+remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood
+will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into
+the battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on
+paths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through
+shadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the
+journey be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's
+knee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and
+girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell
+of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as
+much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse
+to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall
+welcome us home, as we say: "Father and mother, we have come, and
+brought our children with us." The old revival hymn described it with
+glorious repetition:
+
+    "Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+    Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+    Brothers and sisters there will meet,
+      Will meet to part no more."
+
+I read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's
+house on a stormy night by some fascinating stories that were being
+told him, and then looked out and saw it was so dark he did not dare
+go home. The incident impressed me the more because in my childhood I
+had much, the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with
+him, but they dared not. It got later and later--seven o'clock, eight
+o'clock, nine o'clock. "Oh," he said, "I wish I were home!" As he
+opened the door the last time a blinding flash of the storm and a
+deafening roar overcame him. But after a while he saw in the distance
+a lantern, and lo! his brother was coming to fetch him home, and the
+lad stepped out and with swift feet hastened on to his brother who
+took him home, where they were so glad to greet him, and for a long
+time supper had been waiting. So may it be when the night of death
+comes and our earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare not go
+alone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother, our Friend closer than a
+brother, come out to meet us with the light of the promises, which
+shall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go in to join our
+loved ones waiting for us, supper all ready, the marriage supper of
+the Lamb!
+
+
+
+
+TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+    "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
+    alone? bid her therefore that she help me."--LUKE 10:40.
+
+
+Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead
+and his widow is taking charge of the premises. This is the widow
+Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household.
+This is Mary, the youngest sister, with a book under her arm, and her
+face having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation. Company has
+come. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good
+deal of excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture is
+hastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are
+adjusted as well as, in so short a time, Mary and Martha can attend to
+these matters.
+
+
+THE WELCOME TO CHRIST.
+
+They did not keep Christ standing at the door until they were newly
+appareled, or until they had elaborately arranged their tresses, then
+coming out with their affected surprise as though they had not heard
+the two or three previous knockings, saying: "Why, is that you?" No.
+They were ladies, and were always presentable, although they may not
+have always had on their best, for none of us always have on our best;
+if we did our best would not be worth having on. They throw open the
+door and greet Christ. They say: "Good morning, Master; come in and be
+seated."
+
+Christ did not come alone; He had a group of friends with Him, and
+such an influx of city visitors would throw any country home into
+perturbation. I suppose also the walk from the city had been a good
+appetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important
+department, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner greeted the guests
+than she fled to that room. Mary had no anxiety about household
+affairs. She had full confidence that Martha could get up the best
+dinner in Bethany. She seems to say: "Now, let us have a division of
+labor. Martha, you cook and I'll sit down and be good."
+
+
+DIFFERENCE IN SISTERS.
+
+So you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. There
+is Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive
+of some new pastry, or discovering something in the art of cooking and
+housekeeping. There is Mary, also, fond of conversation, literary, so
+engaged in deep questions of ethics she has no time to attend to the
+questions of household welfare. It is noon. Mary is in the parlor with
+Christ. Martha is in the kitchen. It would have been better if they
+had divided the work, and then they could have divided the opportunity
+of listening to Jesus; but Mary monopolizes Christ, while Martha
+swelters at the fire.
+
+
+TROUBLE IN THE KITCHEN.
+
+It was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that
+day. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious
+entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a
+repast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen.
+Perhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or
+Martha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only
+to have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting
+the proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with
+pitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the
+kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: "Lord, dost Thou not care
+that my sister hath left me to serve alone?"
+
+Christ scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have
+his scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He
+knew Martha had almost worked herself to death to get Him something
+to eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as
+He seems to say: "My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit
+down on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha,
+thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is
+needful." As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a
+great many household perplexities and anxieties.
+
+
+NON-APPRECIATION.
+
+First, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made
+Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her
+older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of
+the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange,
+they say when they get home: "Oh, you ought to be in our factory a
+little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty
+subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!"
+Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a
+university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a
+library, while she is health officer, police and president of her
+realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to
+keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed
+to the utmost.
+
+I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit
+in an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and
+throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and
+great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household.
+Those are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great mass
+of housekeepers--the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at
+thirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look
+as though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were
+sixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and
+Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great
+Armageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see
+that the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those
+tombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: "Here
+lies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and
+scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a
+broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle."
+
+
+A WEARING LIFE.
+
+You think, O man of the world! that you have all the cares and
+anxieties. If the cares and anxieties of the household should come
+upon you for one week you would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale--I
+mean insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper arises in the
+morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable
+hour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not
+come; what if the clock has stopped--no matter, she must have the
+morning repast at an irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got
+off to school. What if their garments are torn; what if they do not
+know their lessons; what if they have lost a hat or sash--they must be
+ready. Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps of several
+days, to plan; but what if the butcher has sent meat unmasticable, or
+the grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, and what if some
+piece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or the
+roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things
+occur--you must be ready.
+
+Spring weather comes, and there must be a revolution in the family
+wardrobe, or autumn comes, and you must shut out the northern blast;
+but what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during
+the year, the children have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if
+the fashions have changed. Your house must be an apothecary's shop; it
+must be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of
+ailments--something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn,
+something to poultice the inflammation, something to silence the
+jumping tooth, something to soothe the ear-ache. You must be in half a
+dozen places at the same time, or you must attempt to be.
+
+
+ASSURED SYMPATHY.
+
+If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient
+rush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient. Oh,
+woman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of
+others in regard to your household toils let me assure you, from the
+kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all
+your work from garret to cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and
+Hannah, and Abigail and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and
+Hannah More is the God of the housekeeper.
+
+Jesus was never married that he might be the especial friend and
+confidante of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I blunder; Christ
+was married. The Bible says that the Church is the Lamb's wife, and
+that makes me know that all Christian women have a right to go to
+Christ and tell Him of their annoyances and troubles, since by His
+oath of conjugal fidelity He is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert,
+the Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this subject:
+
+    "The servant by this clause
+      Makes drudgery divine;
+    Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
+      Makes this and the action fine."
+
+Again, there is the trial of
+
+
+SEVERE ECONOMY.
+
+Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are
+subjected to it--some under more and some under less stress of
+circumstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and
+take very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in
+demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of
+women--attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the
+bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the
+president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a
+panic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices,
+this perpetual study of economics, this life-long attempt to keep the
+outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers.
+
+
+A PREPARATION.
+
+Oh, my sister, this is a part of the divine discipline! If it were
+best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front
+windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked
+fifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of
+Zarephath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as
+long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness--forty years.
+Beside that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the
+contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none
+of the nuisances of catering for appetites. And in the land of the
+white robe they never have to mend anything, and the air in that hill
+country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man
+owns his own house, and a mansion at that.
+
+It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven
+if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be
+so great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of
+life if in this world you had a country-seat; but if you have walked
+with tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount
+celestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom,
+oh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do
+except what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen
+centuries! I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all
+the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes and the Hugh Latimers, and
+the Theban Legion. Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be
+kept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a change from here to
+there--from the time when they put down the rolling-pin to when they
+take up the sceptre! If Chatsworth Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on
+Fifth Avenue were to be lifted into the celestial city they would be
+considered uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus would be
+ashamed to be seen going in and out of either of them.
+
+
+THE TRIAL OF SICKNESS.
+
+There are many housekeepers who could get along with their toils if it
+were not for sickness and trouble. The fact is, one-half of the women
+of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass, who has
+never had an ache or pain, may consider household toil inconsiderable,
+and toward evening she may skip away miles to the fields and drive
+home the cattle, and she may until ten o'clock at night fill the house
+with laughing racket; but oh, to do the work of life with wornout
+constitution, when whooping cough has been raging for six weeks in the
+household, making the night as sleepless as the day--that is not so
+easy.
+
+Perhaps this comes after the nerves have been shattered by some
+bereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house, and
+set the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into
+a slumber which needs no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for
+the whole group a great deal better than she can for a part of the
+group now the rest are gone! Though you may tell her God is taking
+care of those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood both flocks;
+and one wing she puts over the flock in the house, the other wing she
+puts over the flock in the grave.
+
+There is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that
+will take a woman through the trials of home life. At first there may
+be a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage
+hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more
+than atoned by the joy of being together, and by the fact that when it
+is late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is
+time to go! The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of
+anxiety and apprehension, are a matter of merriment--the loaf of bread
+turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced
+or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the
+cutlery and the mantel ornaments of a new home.
+
+
+THE PROSE OF MATRIMONY.
+
+But after a while the romance is all gone, and then there is something
+to be prepared for the table that the book called "Cookery Taught in
+Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a
+handful of this, a cup of that and a spoonful of something else. It is
+not something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavored with
+ordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of
+domestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and
+the fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with
+the new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home
+trial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had a wretched
+home. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and
+he says, writing out of his own experience: "Better is a dinner of
+herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."
+
+
+GLORIOUS SELF-SACRIFICE.
+
+How great are the responsibilities of housekeepers! Sometimes an
+indigestible article of food, by its effect upon a commander or king,
+has defeated an army or over-thrown an empire. Housekeepers by the
+food they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they
+introduce, by the influences they bring around the home, are deciding
+the physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race.
+
+You say your life is one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters,
+that is the only life worth living. That was Florence Nightingale's
+life; that was Payson's life; that was Christ's life. We admire it in
+others, but how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves. When in
+this city young Dr. Hutchison, having spent a whole night in a
+diphtheritic room for the relief of a patient, became saturated with
+the poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to put garlands
+on his grave; everybody appreciates that. When in the burning hotel at
+St. Louis a young man on the fifth story broke open the door of the
+room where his mother was sleeping, and plunged in amid smoke and
+fire, crying: "Mother! where are you?" and never came out, our hearts
+applauded that young man. But how few of us have the Christ-like
+spirit--a willingness to suffer for others!
+
+
+A BARBAROUS PEDAGOGUE.
+
+A rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half-starved lad, who
+had offended against the laws of the school, and said: "Take off your
+coat directly, sir." The boy refused to take it off, whereupon the
+teacher said again: "Take off your coat, sir," as he swung the whip
+through the air. The boy refused. It was not because he was afraid of
+the lash--he was used to that at home--but it was from shame; he had
+no undergarment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his
+coat there went a sob through the school. They saw then why he did not
+want to remove his coat, and they saw the shoulder-blades had almost
+cut through the skin, and a stout, healthy boy rose up and went to the
+teacher of the school and said: "Oh, sir, please don't hurt this poor
+fellow; whip me; see, he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt
+him, he's poor; whip me." "Well," said the teacher, "it's going to be
+a severe whipping; I am willing to take you as a substitute." "Well,"
+said the boy, "I don't care; you whip me, if you will let this poor
+fellow go." The stout, healthy boy took the scourging without an
+outcry.[4] "Bravo," says every man--"Bravo!" How many of us are
+willing to take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and
+the anxiety for other people! Beautiful thing to admire, but how
+little we have of that spirit! God give us that self-denying spirit,
+so that whether we are in humble spheres or in conspicuous spheres we
+may perform our whole duty--for this struggle will soon be over.
+
+
+A CHRISTIAN HOUSEKEEPER.
+
+One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance
+of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we
+would come in from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I
+remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the
+line of gray hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table
+and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the fact
+is, I'm too tired to eat." Long after she might have delegated this
+duty to others she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the
+matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for
+somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in
+an express train, I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the
+window and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so
+one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped
+me on the shoulder and said: "De Witt, I see you are looking out at
+the scenes of your boyhood." "Oh, yes," I replied, "I was looking out
+at the old place where my mother lived and died."
+
+That night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was
+the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children
+on either side of the table, most of them gone never to come back. At
+one end of the table my father, with a smile that never left his
+countenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six
+years' smile--not the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage
+and of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful,
+benignant, hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She
+was very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. "Blessed
+are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and
+their works do follow them."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] It may be hoped that the savage who administered it received the
+attention of the Board of Education. A man so grossly unjust should be
+in the Penitentiary.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN ENTHRONED.
+
+    "There are threescore queens."--SOLOMON'S SONG 6:8.
+
+
+So Solomon, by one stroke, sets forth the imperial character of a true
+Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a
+subordinate, but a queen; and in my text Solomon sees sixty of these
+helping to make up the royal pageant of Jesus. Crown and courtly
+attendants and imperial wardrobe are not necessary to make a queen,
+but graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman.
+Woman's position is higher in the world than man's, and although she
+has often been denied the right of suffrage, she always does vote, and
+always will vote, by her influence, and her chief desire ought to be
+that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she
+has already won. My chief anxiety is not that woman have other rights
+accorded her, but that she by the grace of God rise up to the
+appreciation of the glorious rights she already possesses. I shall
+enumerate some of those rights this morning.
+
+I. In the first place, woman has the special and superlative right of
+blessing and
+
+
+COMFORTING THE SICK.
+
+What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of
+disease? Tens of thousands of sick-beds! What shall we do with them?
+Shall man, with his rough hand and heavy foot and impatient bearing,
+minister? No. He cannot soothe the pain. He cannot quiet the nerves.
+He knows not where to set the light. His hand is not steady enough to
+pour out the drops. He is not wakeful enough to be watcher. The Lord
+God, who sent Miss Dix into the Virginia hospitals, and Florence
+Nightingale into the Crimea, and the Maid of Saragossa to appease the
+wounds of the battlefield, has equipped wife, mother, and daughter for
+this delicate but tremendous mission.
+
+You have known men who despised woman, but the moment disease fell
+upon them, they did not send for their friends at the bank, or their
+partner in business, or their worldly associates. Their first cry was,
+"Take me to my wife." The dissipated young man at the college scoffs
+at the idea of being under home influences, but at the first blast of
+the typhoid fever on his cheek he says,
+
+
+"WHERE IS MOTHER?"
+
+I think one of the most pathetic passages in all the Bible is the
+description of the lad who went out to the harvest-field of Shunem
+and got sun-struck, throwing his hands on his temples and crying out,
+"Oh, my head! my head!" and they said: "Carry him to his mother." And
+then the record is: "He sat on her knees till noon, and then died." It
+is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel, once in
+a while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their
+mouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn
+you in the bed! How loudly they talk! How you long for the ministries
+of home!
+
+I knew one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes for
+several weeks' business absence at the West. A telegram came at
+midnight that he was on his death-bed, far away from home. By express
+train the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late. He
+feared not to die; but he was in an agony to live until his family got
+there. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while
+longer. He said: "I am willing to die, but not alone." But the pulses
+fluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped. The express trains
+met in the midnight--wife and daughters going westward, lifeless
+remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad,
+pitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick we want to be sick
+at home. When the time comes for us to die,
+
+
+WE WANT TO DIE AT HOME.
+
+The room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be
+very plain; but who cares for that? Loving hands to bathe the temples;
+loving voices to speak good cheer; loving lips to read the comforting
+promises of Jesus. In the war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the
+musketry; men cried to the hosts, "Forward, march!" men hurled their
+battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, "Charge! charge!"
+but woman scraped the lint; woman administered the cordials; woman
+watched by the dying couch; woman wrote the last message to the home
+circle; woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and
+four men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bands
+and triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be
+written anywhere, save in
+
+
+THE CHRONICLES OF HEAVEN,
+
+of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the
+Chickahominy; of Annie Ross in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret
+Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds
+undressed, some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them
+over, those who had an arm left waved it, and filled the air with
+their "hurrah!"--of Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago with blankets
+and with pillows, until the men shouted: "Three cheers for the
+Christian-Commission! God bless the women at home!" then sitting down
+to take the last message: "Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to
+meet me in heaven; tell her to train up the boys whom we have loved so
+well; tell her we shall meet again in the good land; tell her to bear
+my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier"--and of Mrs.
+Shelton, into whose face the convalescent soldier looked and said:
+"Your grapes and cologne cured me."
+
+Men did their work with shot, and shell, and carbine, and howitzer;
+
+
+WOMEN DID THEIR WORK
+
+with socks, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and Scripture
+texts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that
+land where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded
+and said: "On which side did you fight?" Women knelt down over the
+wounded and said: "Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for
+you to eat? What makes you cry?" To-night, while we men are sound
+asleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will
+be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in
+that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.
+
+II. Again, woman has a superlative right to take
+
+
+CARE OF THE POOR.
+
+There are hundreds and thousands of them in all our cities. There is a
+kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of
+little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need
+to be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks
+would know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a
+dress? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little
+girl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new
+pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it
+falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so
+heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather
+it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and
+finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the
+donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps
+as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust
+out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to
+have come down.
+
+O Christian young woman, if you would make yourself happy and win the
+blessing of Christ, go out
+
+
+AMONG THE DESTITUTE!
+
+A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry;
+but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty
+will give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, "Look after that
+woman; canopy her with your wings and shelter her from all harm;" and
+while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the
+little ones around the room will whisper, "Who is she? Ain't she
+beautiful?" and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear
+dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten
+stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the
+highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men."
+
+Can you tell me why a Christian woman, going-down among
+
+
+THE HAUNTS OF INIQUITY
+
+on a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity? I stood in the
+chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,
+in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh; and I said to
+her, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place,
+"Do you come here nights to hold a service?" "Oh yes," she said, "I
+take my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest
+and the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel;
+and then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them." I
+said, "Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while
+performing this Christian errand?" "Never," she said, "never."
+
+That young woman who has her father by her side walking down the
+street, and an armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as
+that Christian woman who goes forth on gospel work into the haunts of
+iniquity, carrying Bibles and bread. Some one said, "I dislike very
+much to see that Christian woman teaching those bad boys
+
+
+IN THE MISSION SCHOOL;
+
+I am afraid to have her instruct them." "So," said another man, "I am
+afraid too." Said the first: "I am afraid they will use vile language
+before they leave the place." "Ah!" said the other man, "I am not
+afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that if any of those boys
+should use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him
+to pieces and kill him on the spot."
+
+
+SOLICITATION OF CHARITIES.
+
+Backed up by barrels in which there is no flour, and by stoves in
+which there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no
+clothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to
+her, "You go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money."
+She goes in and gets it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She
+could not help but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should get
+it. No need of your turning your back and pretending you don't hear;
+you do hear. There is no need of your saying you are begged to death.
+There is no need of your wasting your time, and you might as well
+submit first as last. You had better right away take down your
+cheque-book, mark the number of the cheque, fill up the blank, sign
+your name, and hand it to her.
+
+There is no need of wasting time. Those poor children on the back
+street have been hungry long enough. That sick man must have some
+farina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I meet
+this delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of such a
+hard-fisted man, and I say, "Did you get the money?" "Of course," she
+says, "I got the money; that's what I went for. The Lord told me to go
+in and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand."
+
+III. Again I have to tell you that it is woman's specific
+
+
+RIGHT TO COMFORT
+
+under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel;
+but all profane as well as sacred history attests that, when the
+crisis comes, she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency.
+How often you have seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of
+frivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to
+a heroine. Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never
+tell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great
+loss to their store, or some of their companions in business play them
+a sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is asked in the
+household, again and again, "What is the matter?" but he believes it a
+sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul.
+Oh sir, your first duty was to
+
+
+TELL YOUR WIFE
+
+all about it. She perhaps might not have disentangled your finances or
+extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear
+misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is
+intended for two.
+
+There are business men here who know what I mean. There came a crisis
+in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while
+there came a day when you said, "Here I shall have to stop," and you
+called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in
+your employ, and you said, "We have got to stop." You left the store
+suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the
+street and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking
+at you, and blaming you, and denouncing you.
+
+You hastened home. You told your wife all about the affair. What did
+she say? Did she play the butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and
+the ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She
+quailed not under the stroke. She helped you begin to plan right away.
+She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and
+wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your
+affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a
+thin, weak woman's arm holding you up; but while you looked at that
+arm, there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the
+eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the
+beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten, twenty,
+or thirty years ago. You said, "Well, this is the happiest day of my
+life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care--I
+don't care."
+
+At the moment you were utterly exhausted. God sent a Deborah to meet
+the host of the Amalekites, and scatter them like chaff over the
+plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels,
+and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their
+Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if
+they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any
+such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a
+Thermopylae in your own household, where God will tell you to stand.
+There are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where
+as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by
+Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of Arc.
+
+IV. Again, I remark, it is woman's right to
+
+
+BRING TO US THE KINGDOM
+
+of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man.
+Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the
+pleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she
+can more easily become a Christian I prove by the statement that
+three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are
+women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this
+world back to God.
+
+
+THE GREATEST SERMONS
+
+are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an
+audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent,
+consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of
+God's truth.
+
+A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on
+toward morning--one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not
+make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened
+the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got
+home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along with you.
+So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and
+make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or
+three o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened,
+and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall
+I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they
+provided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down
+at the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian
+wife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all
+this, broke into tears, and said: "I can't stand this. Oh, what a
+wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his
+Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his
+immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the
+faith and hope of the Gospel.
+
+A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of
+transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of
+obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord
+Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A
+sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something
+had happened, and the sailors cried, "What's the matter?" He said,
+
+
+"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS
+
+haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home
+influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There
+are men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because
+they were any better naturally than some other people, but because
+there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a
+good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a
+Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into
+African jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so
+far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.
+
+I stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of
+their husbands in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an
+oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until
+death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but
+after that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal
+separation? Is there any such thing as
+
+
+AN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,
+
+making the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulchre brighter than
+the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma?
+Yes; I stand here as a priest of the most high God to proclaim the
+banns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace
+of Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son away from
+God? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are
+prayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give,
+there are examples for you to make; and I say now, this morning, as
+Paul said to the Corinthian woman: "What knowest thou, O woman, but
+thou canst save thy husband?"
+
+A man was dying, and he said to his wife: "Rebecca, you wouldn't let
+me have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me
+away into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is
+sealed, and you are
+
+
+THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN."
+
+O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are
+there not some here who have kindly influences at home--are there not
+some here who have wandered far away from God, who can remember the
+Christian influences in their early home? Do not despise those
+influences, my brother. If you die without Christ, what will you do
+with your mother's prayers, with your wife's importunities, with your
+sister's entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to
+write to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so
+kindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be but just one strand
+holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like,
+this morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach.
+For the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of your mother's God,
+for the sake of your daughter's God, for the sake of your sister's
+God, come this day and be saved.
+
+V. Lastly, I wish to say that one of the specific rights of women is,
+through the grace of Christ, finally
+
+
+TO REACH HEAVEN.
+
+Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ's mother, in
+heaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the
+mother of Augustine in heaven; the Countess of Huntingdon--who sold
+her splendid jewels to build chapels--in heaven; while a great many
+others, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little,
+have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a
+change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the
+glass broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the "house
+of many mansions!" No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no
+more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show
+it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for
+aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten
+frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering
+steps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen,
+bitter curse.
+
+Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and
+struggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your
+door fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But
+God has a crown for you.
+
+I want you to realize, this morning, that He is now making it, and
+whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, whenever
+you have a pang of body or soul He puts another gem in that crown,
+until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for
+another splendor, and God will say to His angel, "The crown is done;
+let her up that she may wear it." And as the Lord of Righteousness
+puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, "Who is she?"
+and Christ will say, "I will tell you who she is. She is the one that
+came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made
+white in the blood of the Lamb."
+
+
+A BANQUET.
+
+And then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the
+principalities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will
+blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God, and crimson
+with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and water from
+the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the
+old harpers of heaven will sit there making music with their harps;
+and Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying,
+"She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified
+together." And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace,
+will break forth with congratulation, "Hail! hail!" And there will be
+handwritings on the wall--not such as struck the Persian noblemen with
+horror, but fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light
+and love and victory: "God hath wiped away all tears from all faces!"
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS' VISIT.
+
+    "I will go and see him before I die."--GEN. 45:28.
+
+
+Jacob had long since passed the hundred year mile-stone. In those
+times people were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after
+persons lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of
+his time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to one
+hundred and forty years. A man of undoubted veracity on the
+witness-stand in England swore that he remembered an event one hundred
+and fifty years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut
+three sets of teeth, and died at one hundred and forty years. Joseph
+Crele, of Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and forty years. In 1857 a
+book was printed containing the names of thirty-seven person who lived
+one hundred and forty years, and the names of eleven persons who lived
+one hundred and fifty years.
+
+Among the grand old people of whom we have record was Jacob, the
+shepherd of the text. But he had
+
+
+A BAD LOT OF BOYS.
+
+They were jealous and ambitious and every way unprincipled. Joseph,
+however, seemed to be an exception; but he had been gone many years,
+and the probability was that he was dead. As sometimes now in a house
+you will find kept at the table a vacant chair, a plate, a knife, a
+fork, for some deceased member of the family, so Jacob kept in his
+heart a place for his beloved Joseph. There sits the old man, the
+flock of one hundred and forty years in their flight having alighted
+long enough to leave the marks of their claw on forehead and cheek and
+temple. His long beard snows down over his chest. His eyes are
+somewhat dim, and he can see further when they are closed than when
+they are open, for he can see clear back into the time when beautiful
+Rachel, his wife, was living, and his children shook the Oriental
+abode with their merriment.
+
+The centenarian is sitting dreaming over the past when he hears a
+wagon rumbling to the front door. He gets up and goes to the door to
+see who has arrived, and his long absent sons from Egypt come in and
+announce to him that Joseph instead of being dead is living in an
+Egyptian palace, with all the investiture of prime minister, next to
+the king in the mightiest empire of all the world!
+
+
+THE NEWS WAS TOO SUDDEN
+
+and too glad for the old man, and his cheeks whiten, and he has a
+dazed look, and his staff falls out of his hand, and he would have
+dropped had not the sons caught him and led him to a lounge and put
+cold water on his face, and fanned him a little.
+
+In that half delirium the old man mumbles something about his son
+Joseph. He says: "You do not mean Joseph, do you? my dear son who has
+been dead so long. You don't mean Joseph, do you?" But after they had
+fully resuscitated him, and the news was confirmed, the tears begin
+the winding way down the cross roads of the wrinkles, and the sunken
+lips of the old man quiver, and he brings his bent fingers together as
+he says: "Joseph is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die."
+
+It did not take the old man a great while to get ready, I warrant you.
+He put on the best clothes that the shepherd's wardrobe could afford.
+He got into the wagon, and though the aged are cautious and like to
+ride slow, the wagon did not get along fast enough for this old man;
+and when the wagon with the old man met Joseph's chariot coming down
+to meet him, and Joseph got out of the chariot and got into the wagon
+and threw his arms around his father's neck, it was an antithesis of
+
+
+ROYALTY AND RUSTICITY,
+
+of simplicity and pomp, of filial affection and paternal love, which
+leaves us so much in doubt about whether we had better laugh or cry,
+that we do both. So Jacob kept the resolution of the text: "I will go
+and see him before I die." And if our friends the reporters would like
+to have an appropriate title for this sermon, they might call it "The
+Old Folks' Visit."
+
+What a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not
+almost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers
+had blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded,
+overflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the
+harvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of
+famine had passed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is
+overwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped,
+though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired
+the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and
+now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the
+childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are
+fresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as
+fresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the
+boy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family
+record the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I
+said to my parents: "What is this record, and what does it mean?"
+Their chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them
+
+
+A VERY TENDER SORROW.
+
+What does that all mean? Why, it means our children departed are ours
+yet, and that cord of attachment reaching across the years will hold
+us until it brings us together in the palace, as Jacob and Joseph were
+brought together. That is one thing that makes old people die happy.
+They realize it is reunion with those from whom they have long been
+separated.
+
+I am often asked as pastor--and every pastor is asked the
+question--"Will my children be
+
+
+CHILDREN IN HEAVEN,
+
+and forever children?" Well, there was no doubt a great change in
+Joseph from the time Jacob lost him, and the time when Jacob found
+him--between the boy seventeen years of age and the man in midlife,
+his forehead developed with a great business estate; but Jacob was
+glad to get back Joseph anyhow, and it did not make much difference to
+the old man whether the boy looked older, or looked younger. And it
+will be enough joy for that parent if he can get back that son, that
+daughter, at the gate of heaven, whether the departed loved one shall
+come a cherub or in full-grown angelhood. There must be a change
+wrought by that celestial climate and by those supernal years, but it
+will only be from loveliness to more loveliness, and from health to
+more radiant health. O parent, as you think of the darling panting and
+white in membranous croup, I want you to know it will be gloriously
+bettered in that land where there has never been a death and where all
+the inhabitants will live on in the great future as long as God!
+Joseph was Joseph notwithstanding the palace, and your child will be
+your child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of everlasting
+noon. What
+
+
+A THRILLING VISIT
+
+was that of the old shepherd to the prime-minister Joseph! I see the
+old countryman seated in the palace looking around at the mirrors and
+the fountains and the carved pillars, and oh! how he wishes that
+Rachel, his wife, was alive and she could have come there with him to
+see their son in his great house. "Oh," says the old man within
+himself, "I do wish Rachel could be here to see all this!" I visited
+at the farmhouse of the father of Millard Fillmore when the son was
+President of the United States, and the octogenerian farmer
+entertained me until eleven o'clock at night telling me what great
+things he saw in his son's house at Washington, and what Daniel
+Webster said to him, and how grandly Millard treated his father in the
+White House. The old man's face was illumined with the story until
+almost the midnight. He had just been visiting his son at the Capitol.
+And I suppose it was something of the same joy that thrilled the heart
+of the old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime-minister.
+It is
+
+
+A GREAT DAY WITH YOU
+
+when your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand
+around with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so
+old. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little
+restless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in
+their own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a
+benediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and
+you make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will
+probably not visit you very often--perhaps never again. You go to
+their room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are
+properly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better
+than the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real
+interest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.
+Joseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of
+his father than you do of your parents. The probability is, before
+they leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.
+Grandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your
+children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation
+in the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!
+
+Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever
+may have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a
+palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two most
+memorable visits will be the first and the last. Those two pictures
+will hang in the hall of your memory while memory lasts, and you will
+remember just how they looked, and where they sat, and what they said,
+and at what figure of the carpet, and at what door-sill they parted
+with you, giving you the final good-bye. Do not be embarrassed if your
+father come to town and he have the manners of the shepherd, and if
+your mother come to town and there be in her hat no sign of costly
+millinery. The wife of Emperor Theodosius said a wise thing when she
+said: "Husband, remember what you lately were, and remember what you
+are, and be thankful."
+
+By this time you all notice what
+
+
+KINDLY PROVISION
+
+Joseph made for his father Jacob. Joseph did not say: "I can't have
+the old man around this place. How clumsy he would look climbing up
+these marble stairs, and walking over these mosaics! Then, he would be
+putting his hands upon some of these frescoes. People would wonder
+where that old greenhorn came from. He would shock all the Egyptian
+court with his manners at table. Besides that, he might get sick on my
+hands, and he might be querulous, and he might talk to me as though I
+were only a boy, when I am the second man in all the realm. Of course,
+he must not suffer, and if there is famine in his country--and I hear
+there is--I will send him some provisions; but I can't take a man from
+Padan-aram and introduce him into this polite Egyptian court. What a
+nuisance it is to have
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS!"
+
+Joseph did not say that, but he rushed out to meet his father with
+perfect abandon of affection, and brought him up to the palace, and
+introduced him to the Emperor, and provided for all the rest of the
+father's days, and nothing was too good for the old man while living;
+and when he was dead Joseph, with military escort, took his father's
+remains to the family cemetery at Machpelah and put them down beside
+Rachel, Joseph's mother. Would God all children were as kind to their
+parents!
+
+If the father have large property, and he be wise enough to keep it in
+his own name, he will be respected by the heirs; but how often it is
+when the son finds the father in famine, as Joseph found Jacob in
+famine, the young people make it very hard for the old man. They are
+so surprised he eats with a knife instead of a fork. They are
+chagrined at his antediluvian habits. They are provoked because he
+cannot hear as well as he used to, and when he asks it over again, and
+the son has to repeat it, he bawls in the old man's ear: "I hope you
+hear that!" How long he must wear the old coat or the old hat before
+they get him a new one! How chagrined they are at his independence of
+the English grammar! How long he hangs on! Seventy years and not gone
+yet! Seventy-five years and not gone yet! Eighty years and not gone
+yet! Will he ever go? They think it of no use to have a doctor in his
+last sickness, and go up to the drugstore and get a dose of something
+that makes him worse, and economize on a coffin, and beat the
+undertaker down to the last point, giving a note for the reduced
+amount which they never pay! I have officiated at obsequies of aged
+people where the family have been so inordinately resigned to the
+Providence that I felt like taking my text from Proverbs: "The eye
+that mocketh at its father, and refuseth to obey its mother, the
+ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat
+it." In other words, such an ingrate ought to have a flock of crows
+for pall-bearers! I congratulate you if you have the honor of
+providing for aged parents. The blessing of the Lord God of Joseph and
+Jacob will be on you.
+
+I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the
+most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of
+a son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the
+servants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of
+carriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer
+afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the
+house where he was not welcome, and there were musical instruments of
+all sorts to regale him; and when life had passed, the neighbors came
+out and expressed all honor possible, and carried him to the village
+Machpelah and put him down beside the Rachel with whom he had lived
+more than half a century.
+
+
+SHARE YOUR SUCCESSES
+
+with the old people. The probability is, that the principles they
+inculcated achieved your fortune. Give them a Christian percentage of
+kindly consideration. Let Joseph divide with Jacob the pasture fields
+of Goshen and the glories of the Egyptian court.
+
+And here I would like to sing the praises of the sisterhood who
+remained unmarried that they might administer to aged parents. The
+brutal world calls these
+
+
+SELF-SACRIFICING ONES
+
+by ungallant names, and says they are peculiar or angular; but if you
+had had as many annoyances as they have had, Xantippe would have been
+an angel compared with you. It is easier to take care of five
+rollicking, romping children than of one childish old man. Among the
+best women of Brooklyn and of yonder transpontine city are those who
+allowed the bloom of life to pass away while they were caring for
+their parents. While other maidens were sound asleep, they were
+soaking the old man's feet or tucking up the covers around the invalid
+mother. While other maidens were in the cotillon, they were dancing
+attendance upon rheumatism and spreading plasters for the lame back of
+the septuagenarian, and heating catnip tea for insomnia.
+
+In almost every circle of our kindred there has been some
+
+
+QUEEN OF SELF-SACRIFICE
+
+to whom jeweled hand after jeweled hand was offered in marriage, but
+who stayed on the old place because of the sense of filial obligation
+until the health was gone and the attractiveness of personal presence
+had vanished. Brutal society may call such a one by a nickname. God
+calls her daughter, and Heaven calls her saint, and I call her
+domestic martyr. A half dozen ordinary women have not as much nobility
+as could be found in the smallest joint of the little finger of her
+left hand. Although the world has stood six thousand years, this is
+the first apotheosis of maidenhood, although in the long line of those
+who have declined marriage that they might be qualified for some
+especial mission are the names of Anna Ross, and Margaret
+Breckinridge, and Mary Shelton, and Anna Etheridge, and Georgiana
+Willetts, the angels of the battlefields of Fair Oaks, and Lookout
+Mountain, and Chancellorsville, and Cooper Shop Hospital: and though
+single life has been honored by the fact that the three grandest men
+of the Bible--John and Paul and Christ--were
+
+
+CELIBATES.
+
+Let the ungrateful world sneer at the maiden aunt, but God has a
+throne burnished for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in
+heaven there is a vase containing two jewels, the one brighter than
+the Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any diamond
+ever found in the districts of Golconda--the one jewel by the lapidary
+of the palace cut with the words: "Inasmuch as ye did it to father;"
+the other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words:
+"Inasmuch as ye did it to mother." "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse"
+is the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton, who found an old woman who
+had been turned off by her prospered sons; but I thank God I may find
+in my text "Over the hills to the palace."
+
+As if to disgust us with unfilial conduct, the Bible presents us the
+story of Micah, who stole the eleven hundred shekels from his mother,
+and the story of Absalom, who tried to dethrone his father. But all
+history is beautiful with stories of filial fidelity. Epaminondas, the
+warrior, found his chief delight in reciting to his parents his
+victories. There goes AEneas from burning Troy, on his shoulders
+Anchises, his father. The Athenians punished with death any unfilial
+conduct. There goes beautiful Ruth escorting venerable Naomi across
+the desert amid the howling of the wolves and the barking of the
+jackals. John Lawrence burned at the stake in Colchester, was cheered
+in the flames by his children, who said: "O God, strengthen thy
+servant and keep thy promise!" And Christ in the hour of excruciation
+provided for His old mother. Jacob kept his resolution, "I will go and
+see him before I die," and a little while after we find them walking
+the tessellated floor of the palace, Jacob and Joseph, the
+prime-minister proud of the shepherd.
+
+I may say in regard to the most of you that your parents have probably
+visited you for the last time, or will soon pay you such a visit, and
+I have wondered if they will ever visit you
+
+
+IN THE KING'S PALACE.
+
+"Oh," you say, "I am in the pit of sin!" Joseph was in the pit. "Oh,"
+you say, "I am in the prison of mine iniquity!" Joseph was once in
+prison. "Oh," you say, "I didn't have a fair chance; I was denied
+maternal kindness!" Joseph was denied maternal attendance. "Oh," you
+say, "I am far away from the land of my nativity!" Joseph was far from
+home. "Oh," you say, "I have been betrayed and exasperated!" Did not
+Joseph's brethren sell him to a passing Ishmaelitish caravan? Yet God
+brought him to that emblazoned residence; and if you will trust His
+grace in Jesus Christ you, too, will be empalaced. Oh, what a day that
+will be when the old folks come from an adjoining mansion in heaven,
+and find you amid the alabaster pillars of the throne-room and living
+with the king! They are coming up the steps now, and the epauletted
+guard of the palace rushes in and says: "Your father's coming, your
+mother's coming!" And when under the arches of precious stones and on
+the pavement of porphyry you greet each other, the scene will eclipse
+the meeting on the Goshen highway, when Joseph and Jacob fell on each
+other's neck and wept a good while.
+
+But oh, how changed the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into
+the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into
+immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the
+sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit
+passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and
+dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer
+has been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on
+earth before we died, now we visit you in your new home after our
+ascension." And father will say, "Mother, don't you see Joseph is yet
+alive?" and mother will say, "Yes, father, Joseph is yet alive." And
+then they will talk over their earthly anxieties in regard to you, and
+the midnight supplications in your behalf, and they will recite to
+each other the old Scripture passage with which they used to cheer
+their staggering faith: "I will be a God to thee and thy seed after
+thee." Oh, the palace, the palace, the palace! That is what Richard
+Baxter called "The Saints' Everlasting Rest." That is what John Bunyan
+called the "Celestial City." That is Young's "Night Thoughts" turned
+into morning exultations. That is Gray's "Elegy in a Churchyard"
+turned to resurrection spectacle. That is the "Cotter's Saturday
+Night" exchanged for the Cotter's Sabbath morning. That is the
+shepherd of Salisbury Plain amid the flocks on the hills of heaven.
+That is the famine-struck Padan-aram turned into the rich pasture
+fields of Goshen. That is Jacob visiting Joseph at the emerald
+castle.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.
+
+    "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord
+    hath done for thee."--MARK 5:19.
+
+
+There are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which
+to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish
+that they had some such great opportunity in which to display their
+Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they
+only wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach
+righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; all they want is only
+an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now the evangelist
+comes to us, and he practically says: "I will show you a place where
+you can exhibit all that is grand, and beautiful, and glorious in
+Christian character, and that is the domestic circle."
+
+
+EVERY MAN'S OPPORTUNITY.
+
+If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere he will not be
+faithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at
+the gate of the temple, he will never be able to preach three thousand
+souls into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will not take pains
+to instruct in the way of salvation the jailor of the Philippian
+dungeon, he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not faithful in a
+skirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is we are
+all placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve
+God; and we ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of
+usefulness which we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing
+question with you and with me ought to be: "Lord, what wilt thou have
+me now and here to do?"
+
+
+WHAT A HOME IS.
+
+There is one word in my text around which the most of our thoughts
+will this morning revolve. That word is "Home." Ask ten different men
+the meaning of that word, and they will give you ten different
+definitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at
+the table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books,
+devotion at the altar. To him it means a greeting at the door and a
+smile at the chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping its hands
+with laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the ripples sleep the
+shadows.
+
+Ask another man what home is, and he will tell you it is want, looking
+out of a cheerless firegrate, kneading hunger in an empty bread tray.
+The damp air shivering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children
+robbers and murderers in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every
+face a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from
+the front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that door-sill. Vestibule of
+the pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forging everlasting
+chains. Faggots for an unending funeral pile. Awful word! It is
+spelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats
+with the death agony of despair.
+
+The word "Home" in the one case means everything bright. The word
+"Home" in the other case means everything terrific.
+
+I shall speak to you this morning of home as a test of character, home
+as a refuge, home as a political safeguard, home as a school, and home
+as a type of heaven.
+
+And in the first place I remark, that home is a powerful test of
+character. The disposition in public may be in gay costume, while in
+private it is in dishabille. As play actors may appear in one way on
+the stage, and may appear in another way behind the scenes, so private
+character may be very different from public character. Private
+character is often public character turned wrong side out. A man may
+receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of
+smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are
+business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and
+good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and
+their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam
+breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets.
+
+
+HOME MANNERS.
+
+Reputation is only the shadow of character, and a very small house
+sometimes will cast a very long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with
+myrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as bright and warm as a
+sheaf of sunbeams, and yet they may only be a magnificent show window
+to a wretched stock of goods. There is many a man who is affable in
+public life and amid commercial spheres who, in a cowardly way, takes
+his anger and his petulance home, and drops them on the domestic
+circle.
+
+The reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because
+they do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their
+petulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do
+not let their notes go to protest. It does not pay. Or for the same
+reason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his
+stock at less than the right price, lest it depreciate the value. As
+at some time the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a
+tempestuous night. There are people who in public act the
+philanthropist, who at home act the Nero, with respect to their
+slippers and their gown.
+
+
+AUDUBON'S GREATNESS.
+
+Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through
+the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful
+birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript,
+and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and
+rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the
+manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad
+temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all
+the great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And
+yet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are
+utterly unreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of
+raiment will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm.
+
+Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private
+is making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank
+that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in
+circulation with no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at
+home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have
+not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public
+plausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the
+slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a
+mighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere,
+whether you demonstrate it or not.
+
+
+HOME A REFUGE.
+
+Again, I remark that home is a refuge. Life is the United States army
+on the national road to Mexico, a long march, with ever and anon a
+skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack the
+arms, we hang up the war cap and lay our head on the knapsack, we
+sleep until the morning bugle calls us to marching and action. How
+pleasant it is to rehearse the victories and the surprises, and the
+attacks of the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle!
+
+Yea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts, and torn sails, and
+hulk aleak, we put in at the harbor of home. Blessed harbor! There we
+go for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The candle in the window
+is to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children
+go forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the "Narrows" take the
+hand of ships. The door-sill of the home is the wharf where heavy
+life is unladen.
+
+There is the place where we may talk of what we have done without
+being charged with self adulation. There is the place where we may
+lounge without being thought ungraceful. There is the place where we
+may express affection without being thought silly. There is the place
+where we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles.
+Forlorn earth pilgrim! no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is
+brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent
+for marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest
+from this scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain. God pity the
+man or the woman who has no home!
+
+
+A POLITICAL SAFEGUARD.
+
+Further, I remark that home is a political safeguard. The safety of
+the State must be built on the safety of the home. Why cannot France
+come to a placid republic? Ever and anon there is a threat of national
+capsize. France as a nation has not the right kind of a Christian
+home. The Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for a
+republic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute
+necessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to
+make the family adhere, there will not be enough political principle
+to make the State adhere. "No home" means the Goths and Vandals, means
+the Nomads of Asia, means the Numideans of Africa, changing from place
+to place, according as the pasture happens to change. Confounded be
+all those Babels of iniquity which would overtower and destroy the
+home. The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails
+will sink the frigate of the constitution. Jails and penitentiaries
+and armies and navies are not our best defence. The door of the home
+is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and
+the chimneys of our dwelling houses are the grandest monuments of
+safety and triumph. No home; no republic.
+
+
+AS A SCHOOL.
+
+Further, I remark, that home is a school. Old ground must be turned up
+with subsoil plough, and it must be harrowed and re-harrowed, and then
+the crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less
+culture. Now youth and childhood are new ground, and all the
+influences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after life
+luxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approbation, all the
+good cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your
+children. And every ebullition of anger and every uncontrollable
+display of indignation will be fuel to their disposition twenty, or
+thirty, or forty years from now--fuel for a bad fire a quarter of a
+century from this.
+
+You praise the intelligence of your child too much sometimes when you
+think he is not aware of it, and you will see the result of it before
+ten years of age in his annoying affectations. You praise his beauty,
+supposing he is not large enough to understand what you say, and you
+will find him standing on a high chair before a flattering mirror.
+Words and deeds and example are the seed of character, and children
+are very apt to be the second edition of their parents. Abraham begat
+Isaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the ancestral line; but Herod
+begat Archelaus, so iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility
+comes upon parents in view of this subject!
+
+Oh, make your home the brightest place on earth, if you would charm
+your children to the high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion!
+Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts
+gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do
+not expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover
+up your walls with such pictures as West's "Death on a Pale Horse," or
+Tintoretto's "Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them, if you
+have pictures, with "The Hawking Party," and "The Mill by the Mountain
+Stream," and "The Fox Hunt," and "The Children Amid Flowers," and
+"The Harvest Scene," and "The Saturday Night Marketing."
+
+
+CHEERFUL HOMES.
+
+Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's
+frisk, and quail's whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the
+rock at the mountain-top clear down to the meadow ferns under the
+shadow of the steep, comes looking for the steepest place to leap off
+at, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled
+with tempest and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every
+mountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam,
+and there were nothing but simooms blowing among the hills, and there
+were neither lark's carol nor humming bird's trill, nor waterfall's
+dash, but only a bear's bark, and panther's scream, and wolf's howl,
+then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when
+God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with
+gladness, let us take into our home circle all innocent hilarity, all
+brightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad
+girls in preparation for bad men and bad women.
+
+Above all, my friends, take into your homes Christian principle. Can
+it be that in any of the comfortable homes of my congregation the
+voice of prayer is never lifted? What! No supplication at night for
+protection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care? How, my
+brother, my sister, will you answer God in the Day of Judgment, with
+reference to your children? It is a plain question and therefore I ask
+it. In the tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour out His
+fury upon the families that call not upon His name. O parents! when
+you are dead and gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of the
+tombstones will your children look back and think of father and mother
+at family prayer? Will they take the old family Bible and open it and
+see the mark of tears of contrition and tears of consoling promise
+wept by eyes long before gone out into darkness?
+
+
+CHILDREN'S CURSES.
+
+Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle in the hearts of your
+children, and you do not warn them against evil, and you do not invite
+them to holiness and to God, and they wander on into dissipation and
+into infidelity, and at last make shipwreck of their immortal soul, on
+their deathbed and in their Day of Judgment they will curse you!
+Seated by the register or the stove, what if on the wall should come
+out the history of your children? What a history--the mortal and
+immortal life of your loved ones! Every parent is writing the history
+of his child. He is writing it, composing it into a song, or turning
+it into a groan.
+
+My mind runs back to one of the best of early homes. Prayer, like a
+roof, over it. Peace, like an atmosphere, in it. Parents,
+personifications of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The two
+pillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. But shall I
+ever forget that early home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun that
+warms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets the star that guided him. Yes,
+when love has gone out on the heart's altar and memory has emptied its
+urn into forgetfulness. Then, the home of my childhood, I will forget
+thee! The family altar of a father's importunity and a mother's
+tenderness, the voices of affection, the funerals of our dead father
+and mother with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees
+making a perpetual arbor of love, and peace, and kindness--then I will
+forget them--then and only then. You know, my brother, that a hundred
+times you have been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I
+have been describing. You have often had raging temptations, but you
+know what has held you with supernatural grasp. I tell you a man who
+has had such a good home as that never gets over it, and a man who has
+had a bad early home never gets over it.
+
+Again, I remark, that home is a type of heaven. To bring us to that
+home Christ left His home. Far up and far back in the history of
+heaven there came a period when its most illustrious citizen was about
+to absent Himself. He was not going to sail from beach to beach; we
+have often done that. He was not going to put out from one hemisphere
+to another hemisphere; many of us have done that. But he was to sail
+from world to world, the spaces unexplored and the immensities
+untraveled. No world had ever hailed heaven, and so far as we know
+heaven had never hailed any other world. I think that the windows and
+the balconies were thronged, and that the pearline beach was crowded
+with those who had come to see Him sail out the harbor of light into
+the oceans beyond.
+
+
+THE EXILE.
+
+Out, and out, and out, and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and
+down He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived.
+His disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on
+earth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something
+grand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did
+He sail? Why was this the place of His destination? I question the
+shepherds, I question the camel drivers, I question the angels. I have
+found out. He was an exile. But the world has had plenty of
+exiles--Abraham an exile from Ur of the Chaldees; John an exile from
+Ephesus; Kosciusko an exile from Poland; Mazzini an exile from Rome;
+Emmett an exile from Ireland; Victor Hugo an exile from France;
+Kossuth an exile from Hungary. But this one of whom I speak to-day had
+such resounding farewell and came into such chilling reception--for
+not even an hostler came out with his lantern to help Him in--that He
+is more to be celebrated than any other expatriated one of earth or
+heaven.
+
+
+HOMESICKNESS.
+
+It is ninety-five million miles from here to the sun, and all
+astronomers agree in saying that our solar system is only one of the
+small wheels of the great machinery of the universe, turning round
+some one great centre, the centre so far distant it is beyond all
+imagination and calculation; and if, as some think, that great centre
+in the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when He came
+here. Have you ever thought of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you
+know what homesickness is, when you have been only a few weeks absent
+from the domestic circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from
+home. Some of you feel homesickness when you are a hundred or a
+thousand miles away from the domestic circle. Christ was more
+millions of miles away from home than you could calculate if all your
+life you did nothing but calculate. You know what it is to be homesick
+even amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts, and He
+was athirst, and He was ahungered, and He was on the way from being
+born in another man's barn to being buried in another man's grave. I
+have read how the Swiss, when they are far away from their native
+country, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they
+fall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.
+But oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial
+riches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!
+Homesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
+of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that
+homesickness suffered to get us home!
+
+
+THE HOME-GATHERING.
+
+At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. "Heaven is
+our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in
+all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in
+holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed
+that there is almost always a son or a daughter absent--absent from
+home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.
+Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children
+home with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers
+and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the
+door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
+saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,
+incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and
+sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they
+passed through dry shod.
+
+Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not
+stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly
+sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and
+empires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be
+buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let
+everlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no
+crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful
+home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.
+
+
+A DREAM.
+
+One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around
+about me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter--on the lounge, half
+awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.
+It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the
+cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical
+fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than
+Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for
+thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I
+saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I
+saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off
+this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter
+at the forge?" but they never put off the holiday attire.
+
+And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the
+dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills,
+the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers
+and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I
+see. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: "Where
+do the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they
+sit?" And the answer was made me:
+
+
+"WE HAVE NO POOR
+
+in this country." And then I wandered out to find the hovels of the
+destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a
+tear could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was bewildered, and I
+sat down under the branches of a great tree, and I said: "Where am I?
+And whence comes all this scene?"
+
+And then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and
+across the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all
+about me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as
+they shouted I thought I knew their voices; but then they were so
+gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed
+that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped
+their hands and shouted "Welcome, welcome!" the mystery all vanished,
+and I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all
+together again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around, and I
+said; "Are we all here?" and the voices of many generations responded
+"All here!" And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks,
+and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and
+the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all
+together began to leap and shout and sing: "Home, home, home, home!"
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  65: 'it' replaced with 'if' in the sentence         |
+    |             "and if you should strike him..."             |
+    | Page 103: seciety replaced with society                   |
+    | Page 193: Christion replaced with Christian               |
+    | Page 209: beqeath replaced with bequeath                  |
+    | Page 209: wordliness replaced for worldliness             |
+    | Page 276: couse replaced with course                      |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wedding Ring, by T. De Witt Talmage
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