{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_22343/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_22343","id":"gutenberg_22343","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22343","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Parenthood & Family Relations","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Marriage"],"text":"Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse and\nthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttp://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |\n    | been preserved.                                           |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |\n    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |\n    |                                                           |\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nThe Wedding Ring.\n\nA Series of Discourses for Husbands and\nWives and Those Contemplating\nMatrimony.\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nBy\n\nT. DE WITT TALMAGE.\n\n\n_Reprinted from THE CHRISTIAN HERALD._\n\n\nPUBLISHED BY\nTHE CHRISTIAN HERALD,\nLOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,\nBIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1896,\nBY LOUIS KLOPSCH.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nThe Choice of a Wife,                                                5\n\nThe Choice of a Husband,                                            24\n\nClandestine Marriage,                                               42\n\nDuties of Husbands to Wives,                                        60\n\nDuties of Wives to Husbands,                                        78\n\nCostume and Morals,                                                 95\n\nHusbands and Wives,                                                114\n\nMatrimonial Discords,                                              136\n\nHotels Versus Home,                                                148\n\nEasy Divorce,                                                      166\n\nMaternity,                                                         184\n\nThe Children's Patrimony,                                          198\n\nThe Mother of All,                                                 217\n\nSisterly Influence,                                                234\n\nTrials of Housekeeping,                                            252\n\nWoman Enthroned,                                                   268\n\nOld Folks' Visit,                                                  286\n\nHome, Sweet Home,                                                  303\n\n\n\n\nThe Wedding Ring.\n\n\nTHE CHOICE OF A WIFE.\n\n    \"Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or\n    among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the\n    uncircumcised Philistines?\"--JUDGES 14:3.\n\n\nSamson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to\nmarriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in\nasking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with\nher looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the\nhostile families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining, and saturnine\ncreature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit\nhim forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically\nsaying: \"When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your\nown country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you\npropose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of\nlilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a\nPhilistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no\npomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy\nbrethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of\nthe uncircumcised Philistines?\"\n\n\nBEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.\n\nExcuseless was he for such a choice in a land and amid a race\ncelebrated for female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of\nwhich self-denying Abigail, and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam,\nand pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary, who hugged to her heart\nthe blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded\nin their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye, the\ngracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only\ntypical of the greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise\nexcuseless is any man in our time who makes lifelong alliance with any\none who, because of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or\nintellectual vanity, or _moral twistification_, may be said to be of\nthe Philistines.\n\n\nMODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS.\n\nThe world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such\nsplendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,\nmotherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have\nnot words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not\nonly man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is\nthe best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea,\nduring the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened\nfor female education, the women of the country are better educated\nthan the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality\nat the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have\ndifficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make\nappropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of\ngood womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour\nI entered this life until now, I hope the delusion will last until I\nembark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this\ncourse of sermons something that seems severe, I am neither cynical\nnor disgruntled.\n\n\nNO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.\n\nThere are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every\nhome of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women,\nself-sacrificing women, holy women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the\nfeet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the\nperson of His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and spectacled\ngrandmothers Lois, bending over Bibles whose precepts they have\nfollowed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women\nthat are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to\nbless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all\ntheir predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except\nthose who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and\nmore inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all\nthis unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some\nof you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of\nyou from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my\ntext: \"Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or\namong all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the\nuncircumcised Philistines?\"\n\n\nMARRIAGE NOT FOR ALL.\n\nThat marriage is the destination of the human race is a mistake that I\nwant to correct before I go further. There are multitudes who never\nwill marry, and still greater multitudes who are not fit to marry. In\nGreat Britain to-day there are nine hundred and forty-eight thousand\nmore women than men, and that, I understand, is about the ratio in\nAmerica. By mathematical and inexorable law, you see, millions of\nwomen will never marry. The supply for matrimony is greater than the\ndemand, the first lesson of which is that every woman ought to prepare\nto take care of herself if need be. Then there are thousands of men\nwho have no right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of\ncharacter that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman.\nSociety will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so\nthat it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is\nunfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his\npurity. What right have _you, O masculine beast_! whose life has been\nloose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in\nthe sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a\ndove?\n\n\nTHE FIRST STEP.\n\nBut the majority of you will marry, and have a right to marry, and as\nyour religious teacher I wish to say to these men, in the choice of a\nwife first of all seek divine direction. About thirty-five years ago,\nwhen Martin Farquhar Tupper, the English poet, urged men to prayer\nbefore they decided upon matrimonial association, people laughed. And\nsome of them have lived to laugh on the other side of their mouth.\n\n\nEMINENT BLUNDERERS.\n\nThe need of divine direction I argue from the fact that so many men,\nand some of them strong and wise, have wrecked their lives at this\njuncture. Witness Samson and this woman of Timnath! Witness\n_Socrates_, pecked of the historical Xantippe! Witness _Job_, whose\nwife had nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses\nof profanity! Witness _Ananias_, a liar, who might perhaps have been\ncured by a truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as\nhimself--Sapphira! Witness _John Wesley_, one of the best men that\never lived, united to one of the most outrageous and scandalous of\nwomen, who sat in City Road Chapel, making mouths at him while he\npreached! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of _John Ruskin_,\nthe great art essayist, and _Frederick W. Robertson_, the great\npreacher! Witness a thousand\n\n\nHELLS ON EARTH\n\nkindled by unworthy wives, termagants that scold like a March\nnorth-easter; female spendthrifts, that put their husbands into\nfraudulent schemes to get money enough to meet the lavishment of\ndomestic expenditure; _opium-using women_--about four hundred thousand\nof them in the United States--who will have the drug, though it should\ncause the eternal damnation of the whole household; heartless and\noverbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet\nmarried--married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build\nthe low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't\nstand it at home. On this sea of matrimony, where so many have been\nwrecked, am I not right in advising divine pilotage?\n\n\nNUMEROUS PITFALLS.\n\nEspecially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that\nsociety is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom\nthey are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the\ndressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster,\nand the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their\nwork, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological\nhieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he\noffers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands.\nThey make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are\nso different from the sample by which they bargained. They were simply\nswindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's\nEvangeline, and Lucretia Borgia for Martha Washington.\n\nAye, as the Indian, chief boasts, of the scalps he has taken, so\nthere are in society to-day many coquettes who boast of the masculine\nhearts they have captured. And these women, though they may live amid\nrichest upholstery, are not so honorable as the cyprians of the\nstreet, for these advertise their infamy, while the former profess\nheaven while they mean hell.\n\nThere is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad it is no wonder that\nsome cannot tell the genuine coin from the base. Do you not realize\nyou need divine guidance when I remind you that mistake is possible in\nthis important affair, and, if made, is irrevocable?\n\n\nA MISTAKE IRREPARABLE.\n\nThe worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You\nsee, it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the\nmore galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, and in\nyour presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you on\nthe opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were\nunited, might take the ring off of the finger, might rend the\nwedding-veil asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from the family\nBible record, but all that would fail to unmarry you. It is better not\nto make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men and women\ndo not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and how\nare you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? There is only one Being\nin the universe who can tell you whom to choose, and that is the Lord\nof Paradise. He made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each\nother. Adam had not a large group of women from whom to select his\nwife, but it is fortunate, judging from some mistakes which she\nafterward made, that it was Eve or nothing.\n\nThere is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly\nas Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was\nmade out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his\ntwenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely\nupon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three\npossibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate\nof Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth,\nwhose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson,\nthe philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing\nand willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to\nthe audience and said: \"Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to\nbe married to this woman;\" by the fate of Bulwer, the novelist, whose\nwife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful\nhouse near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the\ndozen dogs whom she entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton,\nwho married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called\nher a rose, the poet said: \"I am no judge of flowers, but it may be\nso, for I feel the thorns daily;\" by the fate of an Englishman whose\nwife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the\nsea; by the fate of a village minister whom I knew, whose wife threw a\ncup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment--by\nall these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you\nto be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial\nstate, which decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two\nhells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell\nhereafter.\n\n\nNOBLE WIVES.\n\nBy the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her husband was pleading in\ncourt, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression\nhe was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from\nprison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be\ninjurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one\nof the bookcases; by the good fortune of Roland, in Louis' time,\nwhose wife translated and composed for her husband, while Secretary of\nthe Interior--talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the\nhappiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable\nof being prime counsellor and companion in brightness and in\ngrief--pray to Almighty God, morning, noon, and night that at the\nright time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest,\nloving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not sent to you, that you may\nbe sent to her.\n\n\nAVOID MATCHMAKERS.\n\nAt this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance\nbe settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every\ncommunity. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These\nbrokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious\ninnocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis,\nand that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human\nbeing, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who\nis ignorant of the future, give such direction as you require at such\na crisis?\n\nTake the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine\nguidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon,\nwhose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was\nmultitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great\nwide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud\ntongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he\nretreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment.\nAnd while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a\nmattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering.\nAnd Solomon envies him and cries out: \"It is better to dwell in the\ncorner of the housetop than with _a brawling woman_ in a wide house.\"\nAnd one day during the rainy season the water leaked through the roof\nof the palace and began to drop in a pail or pan set there to catch\nit. And at one side of him all day long the water went drop! drop!\ndrop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about\nthis, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words\nfalling on his ear in ceaseless pelting--drop! drop! drop! and he\nseized his pen and wrote: \"A continual dropping in a very rainy day\nand _a contentious woman_ are alike.\" If Solomon had been as prayerful\nat the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how much domestic\ninfelicity he would have avoided!\n\nBut prayer about this will amount to nothing unless you pray soon\nenough. Wait until you are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul\nis disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will\nanswer your own prayers, and you will mistake your own infatuation for\nthe voice of God.\n\n\nAVOID SCOFFERS.\n\nIf you have this prayerful spirit you will surely avoid all female\nscoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of\nthem in all communities. It must be told that, though the only\ninfluence that keeps woman from being estimated and treated as a\nslave--aye, as a brute and a beast of burden--is Christianity, since\nwhere it is not dominant she is so treated, yet there are women who\nwill so far forget themselves and forget their God that they will go\nand hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most sacred\nthings of the soul. A good woman, over-persuaded by her husband, may\ngo once to hear such a tirade against the Christian religion, not\nfully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice.\n\nA woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of religion, said to me: \"I\nwas persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecturer once,\nbut going home, I said to him: 'My dear husband, I would not go again\nthough my declinature should result in our divorcement forever.'\" And\nthe woman was right. If after all that Christ and Christianity have\ndone for a woman, she can go again and again to hear such assaults,\nshe is _an awful creature_, and you had better not come near such a\nreeking lepress. She needs to be washed, and for three weeks to be\nsoaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year, fumigated, before she\nis fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a\nChristian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian\nreligion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in\na life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.\n\n\nTWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.\n\nWhat you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine,\nnot a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping\ngadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as\nto where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul,\none that cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep.\nThere will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will\nboth want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you!\nWhen your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in\nheaven, and not charge upon you with a bitter, \"I told you so.\" As\nfar as I can analyze it, _sincerity and earnestness_ are the\nfoundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to\nget that, and you get nothing but what you will wish you never had\ngot.\n\n\nBEAUTY A BENEDICTION.\n\nDon't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his\neye settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine\nwisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice\nexcept a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of\nthe dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God\ngives it He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the\ngood _Princess of Wales_ dismounted from the railtrain last summer,\nand I saw her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the\nday before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now\nthe wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the\nPrincess passed through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and\nthose who could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their\nstupor, would get up on their elbows to look at her, and wan and\nwasted lips prayed an audible prayer: \"God bless the Princess of\nWales! Doesn't she look beautiful?\"\n\nBut how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!\nExplosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a\nscoundrel with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive\nhis chariot wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts\nand gullies. But there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,\nwhom a rough and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and though\ntheir features may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy,\nyet they have graces of soul that will keep them attractive for time\nand glorious through all eternity.\n\nThere are two or three circumstances in which the plainest wife is a\nqueen of beauty to her husband, whatever her stature or profile. By\nfinancial panic or betrayal of business partner, the man goes down,\nand returning to his home that evening he says: \"_I am ruined_; I am\nin disgrace forever; I care not whether I live or die.\" It is an\nagitated story he is telling in the household that winter night. He\nsays: \"The furniture must go, the house must go, the social position\nmust go,\" and from being sought for obsequiously they must be\ncold-shouldered everywhere. After he ceases talking, and the wife has\nheard all in silence, she says: \"Is that all? Why, you had nothing\nwhen I married you, and you have only come back to where you started.\nIf you think that my happiness and that of the children depend on\nthese trappings, you do not know me, though we have lived together\nthirty years. God is not dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not\nsuspended payment, and if you don't mind, I don't care a cent. What\nlittle we need of food and raiment the rest of our lives we can get,\nand I don't propose to sit down and mope and groan. Mary, hand me that\ndarning-needle. I declare! I have forgotten to set the rising for\nthose cakes!\" And while she is busy at it he hears her humming\nNewton's old hymn, \"To-Morrow:\"\n\n    \"It can bring with it nothing\n      But He will bear us through;\n    Who gives the lilies clothing\n      Will clothe His people too;\n    Beneath the spreading heavens\n      No creature but is fed;\n    And He who feeds the ravens\n      Will give His children bread.\n\n    \"Though vine nor fig-tree either\n      Their wonted fruit should bear,\n    Though all the fields should wither\n      Nor flocks nor herds be there;\n    Yet God the same abiding,\n      His praise shall tune my voice;\n    For while in Him confiding\n      I cannot but rejoice.\"\n\nThe husband looks up in amazement, and says: \"Well, well, you are the\ngreatest woman I ever saw. I thought you would faint dead away when I\ntold you.\" And as he looks at her, all the glories of physiognomy in\nthe court of Louis XV. on the modern fashion plates are tame as\ncompared with the superhuman splendors of that woman's face. Joan of\nArc, Mary Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the enchantment of the\ncourt of Charles II., are nowhere.\n\n\nA WIFE'S DEATH.\n\nThere is another time when the plainest wife is a queen of beauty to\nher husband. She has done the work of life. She has reared her\nchildren for God and heaven, and though some of them may be a little\nwild they will yet come back, for God has promised. She is dying, and\nher husband stands by. They think over all the years of their\ncompanionship, the weddings and the burials, the ups and the downs,\nthe successes and the failures. They talk over the goodness of God and\nHis faithfulness to children's children. She has no fear about going.\nThe Lord has sustained her so many years she would not dare to\ndistrust Him now. The lips of both of them tremble as they say\ngood-bye and encourage each other about an early meeting in a better\nworld. The breath is feebler and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of\nit? Just hold that mirror at the mouth, and see if there is any vapor\ngathering on the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors takes the old\nman by the arm and gently says: \"Come, you had better go into the next\nroom and rest,\" he says: \"Wait a moment; I must take one more look at\nthat face and at those hands!\" Beautiful! Beautiful!\n\nMy friends, I hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal\nsunset. That is a crystalline river pouring into a crystal sea. That\nis the solo of human life overpowered by hallelujah chorus. That is a\nqueen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at\neighty-two, seeing my mother depart at seventy-nine. Perhaps so your\nfather and mother went. I wonder if we shall die as well?\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.\n\n    \"The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the\n    house of her husband.\"--RUTH 1:9.\n\n\nThis was the prayer of pious Naomi for Ruth and Orpah, and is an\nappropriate prayer now in behalf of unmarried womanhood. Naomi, the\ngood old soul, knew that the devil would take their cases in hand if\nGod did not, so she prays: \"The Lord grant you that ye may find rest,\neach of you in the house of her husband.\"\n\nIn this series of sermons on \"The Wedding Ring\" I last Sabbath gave\nprayerful and Christian advice to men in regard to the selection of a\nwife, and to-day I give the same prayerful and Christian advice to\nwomen in regard to the selection of a husband, but in all these\nsermons saying much that I hope will be appropriate for all ages and\nall classes.\n\n\nVOLUNTARY CELIBACY.\n\nI applaud the celibacy of a multitude of women who, rather than make\nunfit selection, have made none at all. It has not been a lack of\nopportunity for marital contract on their part, but their own culture\nand refinement, and their exalted idea as to what a husband ought to\nbe, have caused their declinature. They have seen so many women marry\nimbeciles, or ruffians, or incipient sots, or life-time incapables, or\nmagnificent nothings, or men who before marriage were angelic and\nafterward diabolic, that they have been alarmed and stood back. They\nsaw so many boats go into the maelstrom that they steered into other\nwaters. Better for a woman to live alone, though she live a thousand\nyears, than to be annexed to one of these masculine failures with\nwhich society is surfeited. The patron saint of almost every family\ncircle is some such unmarried woman, and among all the families of\ncousins she moves around, and her coming in each house is the morning,\nand her going away is the night.\n\n\nA BENEFICENT SPINSTERHOOD.\n\nIn my large circle of kindred, perhaps twenty families in all, it was\nan Aunt Phoebe. Paul gave a letter of introduction to one whom he\ncalls \"Phoebe, our sister,\" as she went up from Cenchrea to Rome,\ncommending her for her kindness and Christian service, and imploring\nfor her all courtesies. I think Aunt Phoebe was named after her. Was\nthere a sickness in any of the households, she was there ready to sit\nup and count out the drops of medicine. Was there a marriage, she\nhelped deck the bride for the altar. Was there a new soul incarnated,\nshe was there to rejoice at the nativity. Was there a sore bereavement\nshe was there to console. The children, rushed out at her first\nappearance, crying, \"Here comes Aunt Phoebe,\" and but for parental\ninterference they would have pulled her down with their caresses--for\nshe was not very strong, and many severe illnesses had given her\nenough glimpses of the next world to make her heavenly-minded. Her\ntable was loaded up with Baxter's \"Saints' Rest,\" Doddridge's \"Rise\nand Progress,\" and Jay's \"Morning and Evening Exercises,\" and John\nBunyan's \"Pilgrim's Progress,\" and like books, which have fitted out\nwhole generations for the heaven upon which they have already entered.\n\n\nA GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN.\n\n\"De Witt,\" she said to me one day, \"twice in my life I have been so\noverwhelmed with the love of God that I fainted away and could hardly\nbe resuscitated. Don't tell me there is no heaven. I have seen it\ntwice.\" If you would know how her presence would soothe an anxiety, or\nlift a burden, or cheer a sorrow, or leave a blessing on every room in\nthe house, ask any of the Talmages. She had tarried at her early home,\ntaking care of an invalid father, until the bloom of life had\nsomewhat faded; but she could interest the young folks with some\nthree or four tender passages in her own history, so that we all knew\nthat it was not through lack of opportunity that she was not the queen\nof one household, instead of being a benediction on a whole circle of\nhouseholds.\n\nAt about seventy years of age she made her last visit to my house, and\nwhen she sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her\npresence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I\nhad got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole\nalphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went\nout of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in\nheaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest\ngallery! I saw the other day in the village cemetery of Somerville,\nN.J., her resting-place, the tombstone having on it the words which\nthirty years ago she told me she would like to have inscribed there,\nnamely: \"The Morning Cometh.\"\n\n\nILLUSTRIOUS SPINSTERS.\n\nHad she a mission in the world? Certainly. As much as Caroline\nHerschel, first amanuensis for her illustrious brother, and then his\nassistant in astronomical calculations, and then discovering worlds\nfor herself, dying at ninety-eight years of age, still busy with the\nstars till she sped beyond them; as much as had Florence Nightingale,\nthe nurse of the Crimea; or Grace Darling, the oarswoman of the Long\nStone Lighthouse; or Mary Lyon, the teacher of Mount Holyoke Female\nSeminary; or Hannah More, the Christian authoress of England; or\nDorothea Dix, the angel of mercy for the insane; or Anna Etheridge,\namong the wounded of Blackburn's Fort; or Margaret Breckenridge, at\nVicksburg; or Mary Shelton, distributing roses and grapes and cologne\nin western hospital; or thousands of other glorious women like them,\nwho never took the marriage sacrament. Appreciate all this, my sister,\nand it will make you deliberate before you rush out of the single\nstate into another, unless you are sure of betterment.\n\n\nA DIFFICULT BUSINESS.\n\nDeliberate and pray. Pray and deliberate. As I showed you in my former\nsermon, a man ought to supplicate Divine guidance in such a crisis;\nhow much more important that you solicit it! It is easier for a man to\nfind an appropriate wife than for a woman to find a good husband. This\nis a matter of arithmetic, as I showed in former discourse. Statistics\nshow that in Massachusetts and New York States women have a majority\nof hundreds of thousands. Why this is we leave others to surmise. It\nwould seem that woman is a favorite with the Lord, and that therefore\nHe has made more of that kind. From the order of the creation in\nparadise it is evident that woman is an improved edition of man. But\nwhatever be the reason for it, the fact is certain that she who\nselects a husband has a smaller number of people to select from than\nhe who selects a wife. Therefore a woman ought to be especially\ncareful in her choice of life-time companionship. She cannot afford to\nmake a mistake. If a man err in his selection he can spend his\nevenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities by tobacco-smoke; but\nwoman has no club-room for refuge, and would find it difficult to\nhabituate herself to cigars. If a woman make a bad job of marital\nselection, the probability is that nothing but a funeral can relieve\nit. Divorce cases in court may interest the public, but the\nlove-letters of a married couple are poor reading, except for those\nwho write them. Pray God that you be delivered from irrevocable\nmistake!\n\n\nPARTNERS TO AVOID.\n\nAvoid affiance with a despiser of the Christian religion, whatever\nelse he may have or may not have. I do not say he must needs be a\nreligious man, for Paul says the unbelieving husband is sanctified by\nthe wife; but marriage with a man who hates the Christian religion\nwill insure you a life of wretchedness. He will caricature your habit\nof kneeling in prayer. He will speak depreciatingly of Christ. He will\nwound all the most sacred feelings of your soul. He will put your home\nunder the anathema of the Lord God Almighty. In addition to the\nanguish with which he will fill your life, there is great danger that\nhe will despoil your hope of heaven, and make your marriage relation\nan infinite and eternal disaster. If you have made such engagement,\nyour first duty is to break it. My word may come just in time to save\nyour soul.\n\n\nHUSBANDS SELDOM REFORM.\n\nFurther, do not unite in marriage with a man of bad habits in the idea\nof reforming him. If now, under the restraint of your present\nacquaintance, he will not give up his bad habits, after he has won the\nprize you cannot expect him to do so. You might as well plant a violet\nin the face of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing it. You\nmight as well run a schooner alongside of a burning ship with the idea\nof saving the ship. The consequence will be, schooner and ship will be\ndestroyed together.\n\nThe almshouse could tell the story of a hundred women who married men\nto reform them. If by twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled\nby intoxicants, he is under such headway that your attempt to stop him\nwould be very much like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to\nstop a Hudson River express train. What you call an inebriate nowadays\nis not a victim to wine or whiskey, but to logwood and strychnine and\nnux vomica. All these poisons have kindled their fires in his tongue\nand brain, and all the tears of a wife weeping cannot extinguish the\nflames. Instead of marrying a man to reform him, let him reform first,\nand then give him time to see whether the reform is to be permanent.\nLet him understand that if he cannot do without his bad habits for two\nyears he must do without you forever.\n\n\nMEN WEDDED TO THE WORLD.\n\nAvoid union with one supremely selfish, or so wound up in his\noccupation that he has no room for another. You occasionally find a\nman who spreads himself so widely over the path of life that there is\nno room for any one to walk beside him. He is not the one blade of the\nscissors incomplete without the other blade, but he is a chisel made\nto cut his way through life alone, or a file full of roughness, made\nto be drawn across society without any affinity for other files. His\ndisposition is a lifelong protest against marriage. Others are so\nmarried to their occupation or profession that the taking of any other\nbride is a case of bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their\nliterary work as was Chatterton, whose essay was not printed because\nof the death of the Lord Mayor. Chatterton made out the following\naccount: \"Lost by the Lord Mayor's death in this essay one pound\neleven shillings and six-pence. Gained in elegies and essays five\npounds and five shillings.\" Then he put what he had gained by the Lord\nMayor's death opposite to what he had lost, and wrote under it: \"And\nglad he is dead by three pounds thirteen shillings and six-pence.\"\nWhen a man is as hopelessly literary as that he ought to be a\nperpetual celibate; his library, his laboratory, his books are all the\ncompanionship needed.\n\nIndeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not\npatronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole,\nGibbon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would\nhave helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom,\nand given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's\novertasked brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and\nGibbon to a belief in Christianity. But Dean Swift did not deserve a\nwife, from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waring first,\nand Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all \"Vanessa.\" The great wit\nof the day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties.\n\n\nPREDESTINATION IN MARRIAGE.\n\nAmid so many possibilities of fatal mistake, am I not right in urging\nyou to seek the unerring wisdom of God, and before you are infatuated?\nBecause most marriages are fit to be made convinces us that they are\ndivinely arranged. Almost every cradle has an affinity toward some\nother cradle. They may be on the opposite sides of the earth, but one\nchild gets out of this cradle, and another child gets out of that\ncradle, and with their first steps they start for each other. They may\ndiverge from the straight path, going toward the North, or South, or\nEast, or West. They may fall down, but the two rise facing each other.\nThey are approaching all through infancy. The one all through the\nyears of boyhood is going to meet the one who is coming through all\nthe years of girlhood to meet him. The decision of parents as to what\nis best concerning them, and the changes of fortune, may for a time\nseem to arrest\n\n\nTHE TWO JOURNEYS;\n\nbut on they go. They may never have seen each other. But the two\npilgrims who started at the two cradles are nearing. After eighteen,\ntwenty, or thirty years, the two come within sight. At the first\nglance they may feel a dislike, and they may slacken their step; yet\nsomething that the world calls fate, and that religion calls\nProvidence, urges them on and on. They must meet. They come near\nenough to join hands in social acquaintance, after awhile to join\nhands in friendship, after awhile to join hearts. The delegate from\nthe one cradle comes up the east aisle of the church with her father.\nThe delegate from the other cradle comes up the west aisle of the\nchurch. The two long journeys end at the snow-drift of the bridal\nveil. The two chains made out of many years are forged together by the\ngolden link which the groom puts upon the third finger of the left\nhand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!\n\nBut there are so many exceptions to the general rule of natural\naffinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead\nthem. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are\nthousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women\nleap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle\nthan that in America--women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of\na living husband.\n\n\nTHE ADVERTISING BRUTE.\n\nAvoid all proposed alliances through newspaper advertisements. Many\nwomen, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been\nled on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who\nwrite such advertisements are villains and lepers--all, without a\nsingle exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will\ntell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage\nat a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.\nPut your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion, to see if he will bite.\nTake a glassful of Paris green mixed with some delightful henbane.\nThese are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper\nadvertisements for a wife.\n\n\nMARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.\n\nMy advice is: Marry a man who is a fortune in himself. Houses, lands,\nand large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns\nso rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years may\nbe gone. There are some things, however, that are a perpetual\nfortune--good manners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence,\nsympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole-heartedness.\nMarry such a one and you have married a fortune, whether he have an\nincome now of $50,000 a year or an income of $1000. A bank is secure\naccording to its capital stock, and not to be judged by the deposits\nfor a day or a week. A man is rich according to his sterling\nqualities, and not according to the mutability of circumstances, which\nmay leave with him a large amount of resources to-day and withdraw\nthem to-morrow. If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor indeed.\nIf a man have upright character he is rich. Property may come and go,\nhe is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy him out, nothing can\nsell him out. He may have more money one year than another, but his\nbetter fortunes never vacillate.\n\n\nAVOID PERFECT MEN.\n\nYet do not expect to find a perfect man. If you find one without any\nfaults, incapable of mistakes, never having guessed wrongly, his\npatience never having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in temper,\nin habits, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle.\nWhat would you do with a perfect man who are not perfect yourself? And\nhow dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural\nexcellence? What a companion you would make for an angel! In other\nwords, there are no perfect men. There never was but one perfect pair,\nand they slipped down the banks of paradise together. We occasionally\nfind a man who says he never sins. _We know he lies_ when he says it.\nWe have had financial dealings with two or three perfect men, and they\ncheated us wofully. Do not, therefore, look for an immaculate husband,\nfor you will not find him.\n\n\nPLENTY OF GOOD HUSBANDS.\n\nBut do not become cynical on this subject. Society has a great\nmultitude of grand men who know how to make home happy. When they come\nto be husbands they evince a nobility of nature and a self-sacrificing\nspirit that surprise even the wife. These are the men who cheerfully\nsit in dark and dirty business offices, ten feet by twelve, in summer\ntime hard at work while the wives and daughters are off at Saratoga,\nMount Desert, or the White Sulphur. These are the men who, never\nhaving had much education themselves, have their sons at Yale, and\nHarvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work\nthemselves to death by fifty years of age, and go out to Greenwood\nleaving large estate and generous life-insurance provision for their\nfamilies.\n\nThere are husbands and fathers here by the hundreds who would die for\ntheir households. If outlawry should ever become dominant in our\ncities they would stand in their doorway, and with their own arm would\ncleave down, one by one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot,\nand every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an army in defence\nin a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is\nnot so much the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and\nchildren, and home that turns enthusiasm into a fury. The world has\nsuch men by the million, and the homunculi that infest all our\ncommunities must not hinder women from appreciating the glory of true\nmanhood.\n\n\nFIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.\n\nI was reading of a bridal reception. The young man had brought home\nthe choice of his heart in her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she\nstood in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group, the young man's\neyes filled with tears of joy as he thought that she was his. Years\npassed by, and they stood at the same parlor on another festal\noccasion. She wore the same dress, for business had not opened as\nbrightly to the young husband as he expected, and he had never been\nable to purchase for her another dress. Her face was not as bright and\nsmooth as it had been years before, and a careworn look had made its\nsignature on her countenance. As the husband looked at her he saw the\ndifference between this occasion and the former, and he went over to\nwhere she sat, and said: \"You remember the time when we were here\nbefore. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat\nchanged, but you look to me far more beautiful than you did then.\"\nThere is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and many of you know it in\nyour own homes.\n\nBut, after all the good advice we may give you, we come back to the\ngolden pillar from which we started, the tremendous truth that no one\nbut God can guide you in safety about this matter that may decide your\nhappiness for two worlds, this and the next. So, my sister, I put your\ncase where Naomi put that of Ruth and Orpah when she said: \"The Lord\ngrant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her\nhusband.\"\n\n\nTHE WEDDING.\n\nI imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There\nis much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an\nundertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the\ngladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives,\nbut when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is\npreparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its\nwings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and\nat the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you\nthink it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with\nbrightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To\nhave all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood\nto womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an\nanxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and\nthen have her go away to some other home--aye, all the redolence of\norange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the\nrolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious\ncongratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are\nsuffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you\nhave a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or\nthirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and,\nsuppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, \"Good-bye.\"\n\n\nVISIT THE OLD HOME.\n\nI hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write\noften home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose\ntheir interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and\nstay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place\nafter awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on\nfather's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you\nwill notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day\none of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile\nthe other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to\nyourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are\nfaithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the\nfirst friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted\nthan you ever can be to any one else except to God--I mean your father\nand mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:\n\n    \"Me let the tender office long engage\n    To rock the cradle of reposing age;\n    With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,\n    Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;\n    Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,\n    And keep awhile one parent from the sky.\"\n\nAnd now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood\nbefore me to-day to the God \"who setteth the solitary in families.\"\n\n\n\n\nCLANDESTINE MARRIAGE.\n\n    \"Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.\n    But he knoweth not that the dead are there.\"--PROVERBS 9:17, 18.\n\n\nThe Garden of Eden was a great orchard of fruit-bearing trees, bushels\nand bushels of round, ripe, glorious fruit; but the horticulturist and\nhis wife having it in charge hankered for one special tree, simply\nbecause it was forbidden, starting a bad streak in human nature, so\nthat children will now sometimes do something simply because they are\nforbidden to do it. This\n\n\nKINK IN THE HUMAN RACE\n\nis not easily unsnarled. Tell a company that they may look into any\ntwenty rooms of a large house except one, and their chief desire is to\nsee that one, though all the others were picture-galleries and that a\ngarret. If there were in a region of mineral springs twenty fountains,\nbut the proprietor had fenced in one well against the public, the one\nfenced in would be the chief temptation to the visitors, and they\nwould rather taste of that than of the other nineteen. Solomon\nrecognized this principle in the text, and also the disaster that\nfollows forbidden conduct, when he said: \"Stolen waters are sweet,\nand bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the\ndead are there.\"\n\nIn this course of sermons on \"The Wedding Ring,\" I this morning aim a\npoint-blank shot at \"Clandestine Marriages and Escapades.\"\n\nYonder comes up through the narrows of New York harbor a ship having\nall the evidence of tempestuous passage: salt water-mark reaching to\nthe top of the smoke-stack; mainmast, foremast, mizzenmast twisted\noff; bulwarks knocked in; lifeboats off the davit; jib-sheets and\nlee-bowlines missing; captain's bridge demolished; main shaft broken;\nall the pumps working to keep from sinking before they can get to\nwharfage. That ship is the institution of Christian marriage, launched\nby the Lord grandly from the banks of the Euphrates, and floating out\non the seas for the admiration and happiness of all nations. But\nfree-loveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from\nanother side, and hurricanes of libertinism have struck it on all\nsides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank, and beam, and\nsail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and stanchion. In other words,\nthe notions of modern society must be reconstructed on the subject of\nthe marriage institution. And when we have got it back somewhere near\nwhat it was when God built it in Paradise, the earth will be far on\ntoward resumption of Paradisaical conditions.\n\n\nDEPLORABLE LAXITY.\n\nDo you ask what is the need of a course of sermons on this subject?\nThe man or woman who asks this question is either ignorant or guilty.\nIn New England, which has been considered by many the most moral part\nof the United States, there are two thousand divorces per year. And in\nMassachusetts, the headquarters of steady habits, there is one divorce\nto every fourteen marriages. The State of Maine, considered by many\nalmost frigid in proprieties, has in one year four hundred and\nseventy-eight divorces. In Vermont _swapping wives_ is not a rare\ntransaction. In Connecticut there are women who boast that they have\nfour or five times been divorced. Moreover, our boasted Protestantism\nis, on this subject, more lax than Roman Catholicism. Roman\nCatholicism admits of no divorce except for the reason that Christ\nadmitted as a lawful reason. But Protestantism is admitting anything\nand everything, and the larger the proportion of Protestants in any\npart of the country, the larger the ratio of divorce. Do you not then\nthink that Protestantism needs some toning up on this subject?\n\n\nGROWING POPULARITY.\n\nAye, when you realize that the sacred and divine institution is being\ncaricatured and defamed by clandestine marriages and escapades all\nover the land, does there not seem a call for such discussion? Hardly\na morning or evening paper comes into your possession without\nreporting them, and there are fifty of these occurrences where one is\nreported, because it is the interest of all parties to hush them up.\nThe victims are, all hours of the night, climbing down ladders or\ncrossing over from State to State, that they may reach laws of greater\nlaxity, holding reception six months after marriage to let the public\nknow for the first time that a half year before they were united in\nwedlock. Ministers of religion, and justices of the peace, and mayors\nof cities, willingly joining in marriage runaways from other States\nand neighborhoods; the coach-box and the back seat of the princely\nlandau in flirtation; telegrams flashing across the country for the\narrest of absconded school misses, who started off with arm full of\nbooks, and taking rail trains to meet their affianced--in the\nsnow-drifts of the great storm that has recently passed over the\ncountry some of them, I read, have perished--thousands of people in a\nmarriage whose banns have never been published; precipitated\nconjugality; bigamy triumphant; marriage a joke; society blotched all\nover with a putrefaction on this subject which no one but the Almighty\nGod can arrest.\n\nWe admit that clandestinity and escapade are sometimes authorized and\nmade right by parental tyranny or domestic serfdom. There have been\nexceptional cases where parents have had a monomania in regard to\ntheir sons and daughters, demanding their celibacy or forbidding\nrelations every way right. Through absurd family ambition parents have\nsometimes demanded qualifications and equipment of fortune\nunreasonable to expect or simply impossible. Children are not expected\nto marry to please their parents, but to please themselves. Given good\nmorals, means of a livelihood, appropriate age and quality of social\nposition, and no parent has a right to prohibit a union that seems\ndeliberate and a matter of the heart. Rev. Philip Henry, eminent for\npiety and good sense, used to say to his children: \"Please God and\nplease yourselves, and you shall never displease me.\"\n\n\nA MATRIMONIAL TRAGEDY.\n\nDuring our Civil War a marriage was about to be celebrated at\nCharleston, S.C., between Lieutenant de Rochelle and Miss Anna, the\ndaughter of ex-Governor Pickens. As the ceremony was about to be\nsolemnized a shell broke through the roof and wounded nine of the\nguests, and the bride fell dying, and, wrapped in her white wedding\nrobe, her betrothed kneeling at her side, in two hours she expired.\nAnd there has been many as bright a union of hearts as that proposed\nthat the bombshell of outrageous parental indignation has wounded and\nscattered and slain.\n\nIf the hand offered in marriage be blotched of intemperance; if the\nlife of the marital candidate has been debauched; if he has no visible\nmeans of support, and poverty and abandonment seem only a little way\nahead; if the twain seem entirely unmatched in disposition, protest\nand forbid, and re-enforce your opinion by that of others, and put all\nlawful obstacles in the way; but do not join that company of parents\nwho have ruined their children by a plutocracy of domestic crankiness\nwhich has caused more than one elopement. I know of a few cases where\nmarriage has been under the red-hot anathema of parents and all the\nneighbors, but God approved, and the homes established have been\nbeautiful and positively Edenic.\n\nBut while we have admitted there are real cases of justifiable\nrebellion, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--yea, in nine hundred\nand ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, these unlicensed departures\nand decampments by moonlight are ruin, temporal and eternal. It is\nsafer for a woman to jump off the docks of the East River and depend\non being able to swim to the other shore, or get picked up by a\nferry-boat. The possibilities are that she may be rescued, but the\nprobability is that she will not. Read the story of the escapades in\nthe newspapers for the last ten years, and find me a half dozen that\ndo not mean poverty, disgrace, abandonment, police court, divorce,\ndeath, and hell. \"Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret\nis pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there.\" Satan\npresides over the escapade. He introduces the two parties to each\nother. He gets them to pledge their troth. He appoints where they\nshall meet. He shows them where they can find officiating minister or\nsquire. He points out to them the ticket office for the rail train. He\nputs them aboard, and when they are going at forty miles the hour he\njumps off and leaves them in the lurch; for, while Satan has a genius\nin getting people into trouble, he has no genius for getting people\nout. He induced Jonah to take ship for Tarshish when God told him to\ngo to Nineveh, but provided for the recreant prophet no better\nlanding-place than the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.\n\n\nTHE DIME NOVEL.\n\nThe modern novel is responsible for many of these abscondings. Do you\nthink that young women would sit up half a night reading novels in\nwhich the hero and heroine get acquainted in the usual way, and carry\non their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents,\nthe day of marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding group of\nkindred the vows are taken? Oh, no! There must be flight, and pursuit,\nand narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine, and\nparental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and gorgeous. In many of the\ncases of escapade the idea was implanted in the hot brain of the woman\nby a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.\n\n\nTHE SCHEME OF BAD MEN.\n\nThese evasions of the ordinary modes of marriage are to be deplored\nfor the reason that nearly all of them are proposed by bad men. If the\nman behave well he has a character to which he can refer, and he can\nsay: \"If you want to inquire about me there is a list of names of\npeople in the town or neighborhood where I live.\" No; the heroes of\nescapades are nearly all either bigamists, or libertines, or\ndrunkards, or defrauders, or first-class scoundrels of some sort. They\nhave no character to lose. They may be dressed in the height of\nfashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and padded, and\ndiamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye\nand intoxicate the olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts\nof villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of them. \"Stolen waters\nare sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not\nthat the dead are there.\"\n\n\nSOCIAL DEGRADATION.\n\nFugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies\nwoman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was\nnot of a higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there would be\nno objections, and hence no inducement to clandestinity. In almost all\ncases it means the lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a man\nmarrying a woman beneath him in society may raise her to any eminence\nthat he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in\nsociety she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable,\nand there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can\nafford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the\nAmerican Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an\ninstance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an\naffluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five\ndollars a day, provided he keeps very busy. Well, many a man has\nlived on five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big\ncontract when with five dollars a day he attempts to support some one\nwho has lived in a home that cost twenty thousand per annum. This has\nbeen about the history of most of such conjunctions of simplicity and\nextravagance, the marriage of\n\n\nOX AND EAGLE.\n\nThe first year they get on tolerably well, for it is odd and romantic,\nand assisted by applause of people who admire outlawry. The second\nyear the couple settle down into complete dislike of each other. The\nthird year they separate and seek for divorce, or, as is more\nprobable, the man becomes a drunkard, and the woman a blackened waif\nof the street. \"Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is\npleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there.\"\n\nThese truant marriages are also to be deplored because in most\ninstances they are executed in defiance of parental wisdom and\nkindness. Most parents are anxious for the best welfare of a child. If\nthey make vehement and determined opposition, it is largely because it\nis a match unfit to be made, and they can see for their daughter\nnothing but wretchedness in that direction. They have keener and wiser\nappreciation, for instance, of the certain domestic demolition that\ncomes from alcoholism in a young man. They realize what an idiot a\nwoman is who marries a man who has not brains or industry enough to\nearn a livelihood for a family. No bureau of statistics can tell us\nthe number of women who, after marriage, have to support themselves\nand their husbands. If the husband becomes invalid, it is a beautiful\nthing to see a wife uncomplainingly, by needle, or pen, or yard-stick,\nor washing-machine, support the home. But these great, lazy masculine\nlouts that stand around with hands in their pockets, allowing the wife\nwith her weak arm to fight the battle of bread, need to be\nregurgitated from society.\n\n\nREVERSED RELATIONS.\n\nThere are innumerable instances in these cities where the wife pays\nthe rent, and meets all the family expenses, and furnishes the tobacco\nand the beer for the lord of the household. No wonder parents put on\nall the brakes to stop such a train of disaster. They have too often\nseen the gold ring put on the finger at the altar turning out to be\nthe iron link of a chain of domestic servitude. What a farce it is for\na man who cannot support himself, and not worth a cent in the world,\nto take a ring which he purchased by money stolen from his\ngrandmother's cupboard, and put it on the finger of the bride, saying:\n\"With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee\nendow.\"\n\nIt is amazing to see how some women will marry men knowing nothing\nabout them. No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods\non credit without knowing whether the customer was worthy of being\ntrusted. No man or woman would buy a house with encumbrances of\nmortgages, and liens, and judgments against it uncancelled; and yet\nthere is not an hour of the day or night for the last ten years there\nhave not been women by hasty marriage entrusting their earthly\nhappiness to men about whose honesty they know nothing, or who are\nencumbered with liens, and judgments, and first mortgages, and second\nmortgages, and third mortgages of evil habits. No wonder that in such\ncircumstances parents in conjugating the verb in question pass from\nthe subjunctive mood to the indicative, and from the indicative to the\nimperative. In nearly all the cases of escapade that you will hear of\nthe rest of your lives there will be a headlong leap over the barriers\nof parental common sense and forethought. \"Stolen waters are sweet,\nand bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the\ndead are there.\"\n\n\nINVOLVES DECEPTION.\n\nWe also deplore these fraudulent espousals and this sneaking exchange\nof single life for married life because it is deception, and that is a\ncorroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must\ndeceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot\ndeceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures\nourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be\ndecided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: \"Presto,\nchange! Now you see her, and now you don't.\"\n\nBetter to wait for years for circumstances to improve. Time may remove\nall obstacles. The candidate for marital preferences may change his\nhabits, or get into some trade or business that will support a home,\nor the inexorable father and mother may be promoted to celestial\ncitizenship. At the right time have the day appointed. Stand at the\nend of the best room in the house with joined hands, and minister of\nreligion before you to challenge the world that \"if they know of any\nreason why these two persons shall not be united, they state it now or\nforever hold their peace,\" and then start out with the good wishes of\nall the neighbors and the halo of the Divine sanction. When you can go\nout of harbor at noon with all flags flying, do not try to run a\nblockade at midnight.\n\nIn view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine\ncorrespondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine\nmeetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of\nmutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters\ncome for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no\ncorrespondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open\nyour letters. Do not employ terms of endearment at the beginning and\nclose of letters unless you have a right to use them. That young lady\nis on the edge of danger who dares not allow her mother to see her\nletters.\n\n\nCONFIDE IN PARENTS.\n\nIf you have sensible parents take them into your confidence in all the\naffairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour\nthan you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have\ntoiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your\nbest interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their\nopposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition\nis founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim,\nor notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and\ntrying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister\nof England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things.\nOne day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr.\nPitt inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his\ndaughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.\nPitt said: \"Is the young man of respectable family?\" \"Yes.\" \"Is he\nrespectable in himself?\" \"Yes.\" \"Has he an estimable character?\"\n\"Yes.\" \"Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition.\" The advice\nwas taken, and a happy married life ensued. Let ministers and officers\nof the law decline officiating at clandestine marriages. When they are\nasked to date a marriage certificate back, as we all are asked, let\nthem peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony was in November\ninstead of January, or decline to leave the date blank, lest others\nfill out the record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all our\nStates, as it has already been in some of the States, making a license\nfrom officers of the law necessary before we can unite couples, and\nthen make it necessary to publish beforehand in the newspapers, as it\nused to be published in the New England churches, so that if there be\nlawful objection it may be presented, not swinging the buoy on the\nrocks after the ship has struck and gone to pieces.\n\nAnd here it might be well for me to take all the romance out of an\nescapade by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the great Scotch\npoet, where he describes the crazed victim of one of these escapades:\n\n                \"... Yet had she many days\n    Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.\n    She lived on alms, and carried in her hand\n    Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring.\n    When any asked the cause she smiled, and said\n    They were her sisters, and would come and watch\n    Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke\n    Of her deceiver, father, mother, home,\n    Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still\n    In lonely places walked, and ever gazed\n    Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;\n    Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,\n    With woe too wide to see beyond, she died.\"\n\n\nUNDER THE LIGHT.\n\nBut now I turn on this subject an intenser light. We have fifteen\nhundred lights in this church, and when by electric touch they are\nkindled in the evening service it is almost startling. But this whole\nsubject of \"Clandestine Marriages and Escapades\" I put under a more\nintense light than that. The headlight of a locomotive is terrible if\nyou stand near enough to catch the full glare of it. As it sweeps\naround the \"Horseshoe Curve\" of the Alleghanies or along the edges of\nthe Sierra Nevadas, how far ahead, and how deep down, and how high up\nit flashes, and there is instantaneous revelation of mountain peak and\nwild beasts hieing themselves to their caverns and cascades a thousand\nfeet tall, or clinging in white terror to the precipices! But more\nintense, more far-reaching, more sudden, swifter and more tremendous\nis the headlight of an advancing Judgment Day, under which all the\nmost hidden affairs of life shall come to discovery and arraignment. I\nquote an overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which I put the whole\nemphasis on the word \"secret.\" \"God shall bring every work into\njudgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil.\"\n\nWhat a time that will be in which the cover shall be lifted from every\nhome and from every heart. The iniquity may have been so sly that it\nescaped all human detection, but it will be as well known on that day\nas the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah, unless for Christ's sake it has\nbeen forgiven. All the fingers of universal condemnation will be\npointed at it. The archangel of wrath will stand there with uplifted\nthunderbolt ready to strike it. The squeamishness and prudery of\nearthly society, which hardly allowed some sins to be mentioned on\nearth, are past, and the man who was unclean and the woman who was\nimpure will, under a light brighter than a thousand noonday suns,\nstand with the whole story written on scalp, and forehead, and cheek,\nand hands, and feet; the whole resurrection body aflame and dripping\nwith fiery disclosures, ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and\ninfernal voices crying, \"Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!\"\n\nAll marital intrigues and all secret iniquities will be published, as\nthough all the trumpets spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized\nthem, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. Oh, man, recreant to thy\nmarriage vow! Oh, woman, in sinful collusion! What, then, will become\nof thy poor soul? The tumbling Alps, and Pyrenees, and Mount\nWashingtons cannot hide thee from the consequences of thy secret sins.\nBetter repent of them now, so that they cannot be brought against\nthee. For the chief of sinners there is pardon, if you ask it in time.\nBut I leave you to guess what chance there will be for those who on\nearth lived in clandestine relations, when on that day the very Christ\nwho had such high appreciation of the marriage relation that He\ncompared it to His own relation with the Church, shall appear at the\ndoor of the great hall of the Last Assize, and all the multitudes of\nearth, and hell, and heaven shall rise up and cry out from the three\ngalleries: \"Behold, the bridegroom cometh!\"\n\n\n\n\nDUTIES OF HUSBANDS TO WIVES.\n\n    \"And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide: and he\n    lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were\n    coming.\"--GENESIS 24:63.\n\n\nA bridal pageant on the back of dromedaries! The camel is called the\nship of the desert. Its swinging motion in the distance is suggestive\nof a vessel rising and falling with the billows. Though awkward, how\nimposing these creatures as they move along, whether in ancient or\nmodern times, sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand\ntravelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora to Damascus! In my\ntext comes a caravan. We notice the noiseless step of the broad foot,\nthe velocity of motion, the gay caparison of saddle, and girth, and\nawning, sheltering the riders from the sun, and the hilarity of the\nmounted passengers, and we cry out: \"Who are they?\" Well, Isaac has\nbeen praying for a wife, and it is time he had one, for he is forty\nyears of age; and his servant, directed by the Lord, has made a\nselection of Rebekah; and, with her companions and maidens, she is on\nher way to her new home, carrying with her the blessing of all her\nfriends.\n\n\nTHE NUPTIAL MEETING.\n\nIsaac is in the fields, meditating upon his proposed passage from\ncelibacy to monogamy. And he sees a speck against the sky, then groups\nof people, and after a while he finds that the grandest earthly\nblessing that ever comes to a man is approaching with this gay\ncaravan.\n\nIn this my discourse on \"The Wedding Ring,\" having spoken of the\nchoice of a lifetime companion, I take it for granted, O man, that\nyour marriage was divinely arranged, and that the camels have arrived\nfrom the right direction and at the right time, bringing the one that\nwas intended for your consort--a Rebekah and not a Jezebel. I proceed\nto discuss as to how you ought to treat your wife, and my ambition is\nto tell you more plain truth than you ever heard in any three-quarters\nof an hour in all your life.\n\n\nTHE RESPONSIBILITY UNDERTAKEN.\n\nFirst of all, I charge you realize your responsibility in having taken\nher from the custody and care and homestead in which she was once\nsheltered. What courage you must have had, and what confidence in\nyourself, to say to her practically: \"I will be to you more than your\nfather and mother, more than all the friends you ever had or ever can\nhave! Give up everything and take me. I feel competent to see you\nthrough life in safety. You are an immortal being, but I am competent\nto defend you and make you happy. However bright and comfortable a\nhome you have now, and though in one of the rooms is the arm-chair in\nwhich you rocked, and in the garret is the cradle in which you were\nhushed and the trundle-bed in which you slept, and in the sitting-room\nare the father and mother who have got wrinkle-faced, and\nstoop-shouldered, and dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you\nwill do better to come with me.\" I am amazed that any of us ever had\nthe sublimity of impudence to ask such a transfer from a home assured\nto a home conjectured and unbuilt.\n\n\nA RISKY VOYAGE.\n\nYou would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should\ngo down to one of the piers on the North River, and at a time when\nthere was a great lack of ship captains, and I should, with no\nknowledge of navigation, propose to take a steamer across to Glasgow\nor Havre, and say: \"All aboard! Haul in the planks and swing out,\"\nand, passing out into the sea, plunge through darkness and storm. If I\nsucceeded in getting charge of a ship, it would be one that would\nnever be heard of again. But that is the boldness of every man that\nproffers marriage. He says: \"I will navigate you through the storms,\nthe cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of rocks and\nicebergs. I have no experience and I have no seaport, but all aboard\nfor the voyage of a lifetime! I admit that there have been ten\nthousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't hesitate! Tut! Tut!\nThere now! Don't cry! Brides must not cry at the wedding.\"\n\n\nTHE WIFE'S TEMERITY.\n\nIn response to this the woman, by her action, practically says: \"I\nhave but one life to live, and I entrust it all to you. My arm is\nweak, but I will depend on the strength of yours. I don't know much of\nthe world, but I rely on your wisdom. I put my body, my mind, my soul,\nmy time, my eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve. Even my name\nI resign and take yours, though mine is a name that suggests all that\nwas honorable in my father, and all that was good in my mother, and\nall that was pleasant in my brothers and sisters. I start with you on\na journey which shall not part except at the edge of your grave or\nmine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than\nI make, when I take her tremendous words, the pathos of which many\ncenturies have not cooled:\n\nEntreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee;\nfor whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will\nlodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou\ndiest will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and\nmore also, if aught but death part thee and me.' Side by side in life.\nSide by side in the burying-ground. Side by side in heaven. Before God\nand man, and with my immortal soul in the oath, I swear eternal\nfidelity.\"\n\n\nENTITLED TO ADMIRATION.\n\nNow, my brother, how ought you to treat her? Unless you are an ingrate\ninfinite you will treat her well. You will treat her better than any\none in the universe except your God. Her name will have in it more\nmusic than in all that Chopin, or Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her\neyes, swollen with three weeks of night watching over a child with\nscarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May morning. After the\nlast rose petal has dropped out of her cheek, after the last feather\nof the raven's wing has fallen from her hair, after across her\nforehead, and under her eyes, and across her face there are as many\nwrinkles as there are graves over which she has wept, you will be able\ntruthfully to say, in the words of Solomon's song: \"Behold, thou art\nfair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!\" And perhaps she may respond\nappropriately in the words that no one but the matchless Robert Burns\ncould ever have found pen or ink, or heart or brain to write:\n\n    \"John Anderson, my jo, John,\n      We clamb the hill thegither;\n    And mony a canty day, John,\n      We've had wi' ane anither.\n    Now we maun totter down, John,\n      But hand in hand we'll go;\n    And sleep thegither at the foot,\n      John Anderson, my jo.\"\n\nIf any one assail her good name, you will have hard work to control\nyour temper, and if you should strike him down the sin will not be\nunpardonable. By as complete a surrender as the universe ever\nsaw--except that of the Son of God for your salvation and mine--she\nhas a first mortgage on your body, mind and soul, and the mortgage is\nforeclosed; and you do not more thoroughly own your two eyes or your\ntwo hands than she owns you. The longer the journey Rebekah makes and\nthe greater the risks of her expedition on the back of the camels, the\nmore thoroughly is Isaac bound to be kind, and indulgent, and worthy.\n\n\nLOVERS' PROMISES BINDING.\n\nNow, be honest and pay your debts. You promised to make her happy. Are\nyou making her happy? You are an honest man in other things, and feel\nthe importance of keeping a contract. If you have induced her into a\nconjugal partnership under certain pledges of kindness and valuable\nattention, and then have failed to fulfill your word, you deserve to\nhave a suit brought against you for getting goods under false\npretences, and then you ought to be mulcted in a large amount of\ndamages. Review now all the fine, beautiful, complimentary, gracious\nand glorious things you promised her before marriage and reflect\nwhether you have kept your faith. Do you say, \"Oh, that was all\nsentimentalism, and romance, and a joke,\" and that \"they all talk that\nway!\" Well, let that plan be tried on yourself! Suppose I am\ninterested in Western lands, and I fill your mind with roseate\nspeculation, and I tell you that a city is already laid out on the\nfarm that I propose to sell you, and that a new railroad will run\nclose by, and have a depot for easy transportation of the crops, and\nthat eight or ten capitalists are going to put up fine residences\nclose by, and that the climate is delicious, and that the ground, high\nup, gives no room for malaria, and that every dollar planted will grow\nup into a bush bearing ten or twenty dollars, and my speech glows with\nenthusiasm until you rush off with me to an attorney to have the deed\ndrawn, and the money paid down, and the bargain completed. You can\nhardly sleep nights because of the El Dorado, the Elysium, upon which\nyou are soon to enter.\n\n\nA WESTERN EDEN.\n\nYou give up your home at the East, you bid good-bye to your old\nneighbors, and take the train, and after many days' journey you arrive\nat a quiet depot, from which you take a wagon thirty miles through the\nwilderness, and reach your new place. You see a man seated on a wet\nlog, in a swamp, and shaking with the fifteenth attack of chills and\nfever, and ask him who he is. He says: \"I am a real estate agent,\nhaving in charge the property around here.\" You ask him where the new\ndepot is. He tells you that it has not yet been built, but no doubt\nwill be if the company get their bill for the track through the next\nlegislature. You ask him where the new city is laid out. He says, with\nchattering teeth: \"If you will wait till this chill is off, I will\nshow it to you on the map I have in my pocket.\" You ask him where the\ncapitalists are going to build their fine houses, and he says:\n\"Somewhere along those lowlands out there by those woods, when the\nwater has been drained off.\" That night you sleep in the hut of the\nreal estate agent, and though you pray for everybody else, you do not\npray for me. Being more fortunate than many men who go out in such\ncircumstances, you have money enough to get back, and you come to me,\nand out of breath in your indignation, you say: \"You have swindled me\nout of everything. What do you mean in deceiving me about that Western\nproperty?\" \"Oh,\" I reply, \"that was all right; that was\nsentimentalism, and romance, and a joke. That's the way they all\ntalk!\"\n\nBut more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who\nby glow of words and personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into\nsurroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that\nshe exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married\nexperience--treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and\ngodless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a\nfarm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of a lifetime.\n\n\nLOVERS' ATTENTIONS.\n\nMy brother, do not get mad at what I say, but honestly compare the\npromises you made, and see whether you have kept them. Some of you\nspent every evening of the week with your betrothed before marriage,\nand since then you spent every evening away, except you have influenza\nor some sickness on account of which the doctor says you must not go\nout. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of\nadulation, and now you think it sounds silly to praise the one who\nought to be more attractive to you as the years go by, and life grows\nin severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of\ntears--tears over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way some of\nyou used to come in the house in the evening, when you were attempting\nthe capture of her affections, and the way some of you come into the\nhouse in the evening now.\n\n\nDON'T BE PREOCCUPIED.\n\nThen what politeness, what distillation of smiles, what graciousness,\nsweet as the peach orchard in blossom week! Now, some of you come in\nand put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say: \"Lost money to-day!\"\nand you sit down at the table and criticise the way the food is\ncooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch\nup the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in\nthat home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic\nautocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with\nhealthful curiosity, yet they must ask no questions. The wife has had\nenough annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen to fill her\nnerves with nettles and spikes. As you have provided the money for\nfood and wardrobe, you feel you have done all required of you. Toward\nthe good cheer, and the intelligent improvement, and the moral\nentertainment of that home, which at the longest can last but a few\nyears, you are doing nothing. You seem to have no realization of the\nfact that soon these children will be grown up or in their sepulchres,\nand will be far removed from your influence, and that the wife will\nsoon end her earthly mission, and that house will be occupied by\nothers, and you yourself will be gone.\n\nGentlemen, fulfill your contracts. Christian marriage is an affectional\nbargain. In heathen lands a man wins his wife by achievements. In some\ncountries wives are bought by the payment of so many dollars, as so many\ncattle or sheep. In one country the man gets on a horse and rides down\nwhere a group of women are standing, and seizes one of them by the hair,\nand lifts her, struggling and resisting, on his horse, and if her\nbrothers and friends do not overtake her before she gets to the jungle,\nshe is his lawful wife. In another land the masculine candidate for\nmarriage is beaten by the club of the one whom he would make his bride.\nIf he cries out under the pounding, he is rejected. If he receives the\nblows uncomplainingly, she is his by right. Endurance, and bravery, and\nskill decide the marriage in barbarous lands, but Christian marriage is\na voluntary bargain, in which you promise protection, support,\ncompanionship and love.\n\n\nTHE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT.\n\nBusiness men have in their fire-proof safes a file of papers\ncontaining their contracts, and sometimes they take them out and read\nthem over to see what the party of the first part and the party of the\nsecond part really bound themselves to do. Different ministers of\nreligion have their own peculiar forms of marriage ceremony; but if\nyou have forgotten what you promised at the altar of wedlock, you had\nbetter buy or borrow an Episcopal Church-Service, which contains the\nsubstance of all intelligent marriage ceremonies, when it says: \"I\ntake thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day\nforward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in\nsickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part,\naccording to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my\ntroth.\" Would it not be a good idea to have that printed in tract form\nand widely distributed?\n\n\nNEVER FLIRT.\n\nThe fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else's wives\nthan to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal\nscuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to\npick up some other lady's pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which\nI have seen under the sun, and it is common among men--namely,\nhusbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own\nwives they bestow upon others. They smile on them coyly and askance,\nand with a manner that seems to say: \"I wish I was free from that old\ndrudge at home. What an improvement you would be on my present\nsurroundings!\" And bouquets are sent, and accidental meetings take\nplace, and late at night the man comes to his prosaic home, whistling\nand hilarious, and wonders that the wife is jealous. There are\nthousands of men who, while not positively immoral, need radical\ncorrection of their habits in this direction. It is meanness\nimmeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife:\n\"You can't help yourself, and I will go where I please, and admire\nwhom I please, and I defy your criticism.\"\n\nWhy did you not have that put in the bond, O domestic Shylock? Why did\nyou not have it understood before you were pronounced husband and wife\nthat she should have only a part of the dividend of your affections;\nthat when, as time rolled on and the cares of life had erased some of\nthe bright lines from her face, and given unwieldiness to her form,\nyou would have the reserved right to pay obeisance to cheeks more\nrubicund, and figure lither and more agile, and as you demanded the\nlast pound of patience and endurance on her part you could, with the\nemphasis of an Edwin Forrest or a Macready, have tapped the eccentric\nmarriage document and have said: \"It's in the bond!\" If this modern\nRebekah had understood beforehand where she was alighting she would\nhave ordered the camel drivers to turn the caravan backward toward\nPadan-aram. Flirtation has its origin either in dishonesty or\nlicentiousness. The married man who indulges in it is either a fraud\nor a rake. However high up in society such a one may be, and however\nsought after, I would not give a three-cent piece, though it had been\nthree times clipped, for the virtue of the masculine flirt.\n\n\nTONE UP.\n\nThe most worthy thing for the thousands of married men to do is to go\nhome and apologize for past neglects and brighten up their old love.\nTake up the family Bible and read the record of the marriage day. Open\nthe drawer of relics in the box inside the drawer containing the\ntrinkets of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellow-colored\nletters that were written before you became one. Rehearse the scenes\nof joy and sorrow in which you have mingled. Put all these things as\nfuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fire rekindle the\nextinguished light. It was a blast from hell that blew it out, and a\ngale from heaven will fan it into a blaze.\n\nYe who have broken marriage vows, speak out! take your wife into all\nyour plans, your successes, your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her\neverything. Walk arm in arm with her into places of amusement, and on\nthe piazza of summer watering places, and up the rugged way of life,\nand down through dark ravine, and when one trembles on the way let the\nother be re-enforcement. In no case pass yourself off as a single man,\npracticing gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of age, in\nladies' society, try to look young-mannish.\n\n\nRESPECT HER PIETY.\n\nInterfere not with your wife's religious nature. Put her not in that\nawful dilemma in which so many Christian wives are placed by their\nhusbands, who ask them to go to places or do things which compel them\nto decide between loyalty to God and loyalty to the husband. Rather\nthan ask her to compromise her Christian character encourage her to be\nmore and more a Christian, for there will be times in your life when\nyou will want the help of all her Christian resources; and certainly,\nwhen you remember how much influence your mother had over you, you do\nnot want the mother of your children to set a less gracious example.\nIt pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and worldly husband say\nabout his wife, with no idea that it will get to her ears: \"There is\nthe most godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual rebuke to my\nwaywardness. Nothing on earth could ever induce her to do a wrong\nthing. I hope the children will take after her instead of after me. If\nthere is any heaven at all I am sure she will go there.\"\n\n\nTHE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.\n\nAy, my brother, do you not think it would be a wise and a safe thing\nfor you to join her on the road to heaven? You think you have a happy\nhome now, but what a home you would have if you both were religious!\nWhat a new sacredness it would give to your marital relation, and what\na new light it would throw on the forehead of your children! In\nsickness, what a comfort! In reverses of fortune, what a wealth! In\ndeath, what a triumph! God meant you to be the high priest of your\nhousehold. Go home to-day and take the Bible on your lap, and gather\nall your family yet living around you, and those not living will hear\nof it in a flash, and as ministering spirits will hover--father and\nmother and children gone, and all your celestial kindred. Then kneel\ndown, and if you can't think of a prayer to offer I will give you a\nprayer--namely: \"Lord God, I surrender to Thee myself and my beloved\nwife, and these dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the past\nand help us for all the future. We have lived together here, may we\nlive together forever. Amen and amen.\" Dear me, what a stir it would\nmake among your best friends on earth and in heaven.\n\n\nA HUSBAND IMPRISONED.\n\nJoseph the Second, the Emperor, was so kind and so philanthropic that\nhe excited the unbounded love of most of his subjects. He abolished\nserfdom, established toleration and lived in the happiness of his\npeople. One day while on his way to Ostend to declare it a free port,\nand while at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman at the\ndoor of her cottage in dejection. The Emperor dismounted and asked the\ncause of her grief. She said that her husband had gone to Ostend to\nsee the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was\nan alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it\nwas the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose\nkindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable\nadmiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see him\nwas simply unbearable.\n\nThe Emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box decorated with diamonds\nsurrounding a picture of himself and presented it to her, and when the\npicture revealed to whom she was talking she knelt in reverence and\nclapped her hands in gladness before him. The Emperor took the name of\nher husband and the probable place where he might be found at Ostend,\nand had him imprisoned for the three days of the Emperor's visit, so\nthat the husband returning home found that the wife had seen the\nEmperor while he had not seen him.\n\nIn many families of this earth the wife, through the converting grace\nof God, has seen the \"King in His beauty,\" and He has conferred upon\nher the pearl of great price, while the husband is an \"alien from the\ncovenant of promise, without God and without hope in the world,\" and\nimprisoned in worldliness and sin. Oh, that they might arm in arm go\nthis day and see Him, who is not only greater and lovelier than any\nJoseph of earthly dominion, but \"high over all, in earth, and air, and\nsky!\" His touch is life. His voice is music. His smile is heaven.\n\n\n\n\nDUTIES OF WIVES TO HUSBANDS.\n\n    \"The name of his wife was Abigail; and she was a woman of good\n    understanding and of a beautiful countenance.\"--1 SAMUEL 25:3.\n\n\nThe ground in Carmel is white, not with fallen snow, but the wool from\nthe backs of three thousand sheep, for they are being sheared. And I\nhear the grinding of the iron blades together, and the bleating of the\nflocks, held between the knees of the shearers, while the clipping\ngoes on, and the rustic laughter of the workmen. Nabal and his wife\nAbigail preside over this homestead. David, the warrior, sends a\ndelegation to apply for aid at this prosperous time of sheep-shearing,\nand Nabal peremptorily declines his request. Revenge is the cry.\nYonder over the rocks come David and four hundred angry men with one\nstroke to demolish Nabal and his sheepfolds and vineyards. The\nregiment marches in double quick, and the stones of the mountain\nloosen and roll down, as the soldiers strike them with their swift\nfeet, and the cry of the commander is \"Forward! Forward!\"\n\n\nA FAIR PROPITIATOR.\n\nAbigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of\nthe hill. She is armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own\nbeauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the\nbase of the craig, he cries: \"Halt! Halt!\" and the caverns echo it:\n\"Halt! Halt!\" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right\nmightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at\nthe sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her\nprowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and\nput before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if\nshe be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and\ndevoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.\n\nAs, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands\nhow they ought to treat their wives--and, though I noticed that some\nof the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well--I now\ntake the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their\nhusbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that\nwhile married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you\ndid not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than\noverbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a\nhundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best\nman they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of a\nhundred of them would say: \"At the other end of this pew.\"\n\n\nABIGAIL'S BAD BARGAIN.\n\nI hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well\nbalanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,\nyou cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was\ncross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her\nheroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole\nregiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home\nand found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story,\nbut had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not\nwant you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: \"That is the way\nto treat a perfect husband;\" for you are to remember that no wife was\never worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of\nher table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she\ncould do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely\nand splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?\n\nFirst, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific\nbattle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or\ncommercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning\nto night is in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your\nhusband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in\nthis next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle.\nIf he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If\nhe do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment,\nremember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his\nplace of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man\nhas been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him\nout of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on\nhis desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone\nwrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and\nforgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him.\nWhen you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or\nshop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there\nand not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.\n\n\nRESPECT SELF-SACRIFICE.\n\nRemember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is\noverworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success\nor defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of\nmen after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for\ntheir families. They begin to ask themselves anxiously the question:\n\"How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home?\nWould my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go\nout into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My\neyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy;\nhow if I should drop under apoplexy?\" The high pressure of business\nlife and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.\n\nSome time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks\nmarried on a salary less than L150--that is, $750 a year--he should be\ndischarged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too\ngreat for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America\nlive by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's\nfamily expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens\nof thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and\nexhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and\nsay you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by\ninches that the home may be kept up.\n\n\nBE LOVABLE.\n\nI charge also the wife to keep herself as attractive after marriage as\nshe was before marriage. The reason that so often a man ceases to\nlove his wife is because the wife ceases to be lovable. In many cases\nwhat elaboration of toilet before marriage, and what recklessness of\nappearance after! The most disgusting thing on earth is a slatternly\nwoman--I mean a woman who never combs her hair until she goes out, or\nlooks like a fright until somebody calls. That a man married to one of\nthese creatures stays at home as little as possible is no wonder. It\nis a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three\nyears, and in a leaky ship. Costly wardrobe is not required; but, O\nwoman! if you are not willing, by all that ingenuity of refinement can\neffect, to make yourself attractive to your husband, you ought not to\ncomplain if he seek in other society those pleasant surroundings which\nyou deny him.\n\n\nDO NOT COMPLAIN.\n\nAgain, I charge you never talk to others about the frailties of your\nhusband.[1] Some people have a way, in banter, of elaborately\ndescribing to others the shortcomings or unhappy eccentricities of a\nhusband or wife. Ah, the world will find out soon enough all the\ndefects of your companion! No need of your advertising them! Better\nimitate those women who, having made mistake in affiance, always have\na veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention.\nWe must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live\nlonger with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the\nprecursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep\nthe awful secret to yourself--keep it from every being in the universe\nexcept the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only\na few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the\ngrave, and say: \"O Lord, I kept the marital secret! Thou knowest how\nwell I kept it, and I thank Thee that the release has come at last.\nGive me some place where I can sit down and rest awhile from the\nhorrors of an embruted earthly alliance, before I begin the full\nraptures of heaven.\" And orders will be sent out to the usher angels,\nsaying: \"Take this Abigail right up to the softest seat in the best\nroom of the palace, and let twenty of the brightest angels wait on her\nfor the next thousand years.\"\n\n\nAVOID MEDDLERS.\n\nFurther, I charge you, let there be no outside interference with the\nconjugal relation. Neither neighbor nor confidential friend, nor\nbrother, nor sister, nor father, nor mother, have a right to come in\nhere. The married gossip will come around, and by the hour tell you\nhow she manages her husband. You tell her plainly that if she will\nattend to the affairs of her household you will attend to yours. What\ndamage some people do with their tongues! Nature indicates that the\ntongue is a dangerous thing, by the fact that it is shut in, first by\na barricade of teeth, and then by the door of the lips. One insidious\ntalker can keep a whole neighborhood badly stirred up. The Apostle\nPeter excoriated these busybodies in other people's matters, and St.\nPaul, in his letter to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, gives them a\nsharp dig, and the good housewife will be on the lookout for them, and\nnever return their calls, and treat them with coldest frigidity. For\nthis reason, better keep house as soon as possible. Some people are\nopposed to them, but I thank God for what are called flats in these\ncities. They put a separate home within the means of nearly all the\npopulation. In your married relations you do not need any advice. If\nyou and your husband have not skill enough to get along well alone,\nwith all the advice you can import you will get along worse. What you\nwant for your craft on this voyage is plenty of sea-room.\n\n\nBE INTELLIGENT.\n\nI charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your\nhusband. What with these floods of newspapers and books there is no\nexcuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past.\nIf you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may\nfill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the\nmerchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the\nmechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the\nprofessional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological,\nor political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man,\nafter having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without\ninformation or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about\nwhat is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the\nhusband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must\n\"go and see a man.\" In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay\nat home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is\nbecause there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his\nwife than anyone else if she could talk as well.\n\n\nADORN THE HOME.\n\nI charge you, my sister, in every way to make your home attractive. I\nhave not enough of practical knowledge about house adornment to know\njust what makes the difference, but here is an opulent house,\ncontaining all wealth of _bric-a-brac_, and of musical instrument, and\nof painting, and of upholstery, and yet there is in it a chill like\nNova Zembla. Another home, with one-twentieth part of the outlay, and\nsmall supply of art, and cheapest piano purchasable, and yet, as you\nenter it, there comes upon body, mind, and soul a glow of welcome and\nsatisfied and happy domesticity. The holy art of making the most\ncomfort and brightness out of the means afforded, every wife should\nstudy.\n\nAt the siege of Argus, Pyrrhus was killed by the tile of a roof thrown\nby a woman, and Abimelech was slain by a stone that a woman threw from\nthe tower of Thebes, and Earl Montfort was destroyed by a rock\ndischarged at him by a woman from the walls of Toulouse. But without\nany weapon save that of her cold, cheerless household arrangement, any\nwife may slay all the attractions of a home circle. A wife and mother\nin prosperous circumstances and greatly admired was giving her chief\ntime to social life. The husband spent his evenings away. The son,\nfifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect\nthat the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same\nturn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had\nbetter save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games\nwere introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting\nthings to tell her children. One morning the son said:\n\n\"Father, you ought to have been home last night. We had a grand time.\nSuch jolly games and such interesting stories!\" This went on from\nnight to night, and after a while the husband stayed in to see what\nwas going on, and he finally got attracted, and added something of his\nown to the evening entertainments; and the result was that the wife\nand mother saved her husband and saved her boy and saved herself. Was\nnot that an enterprise worth the attention of the greatest woman that\never lived since Abigail at the foot of the rock arrested the four\nhundred armed warriors?\n\n\nTHE TRUE SPHERE.\n\nDo not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who\nthink the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who\nwant to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There\nare women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to\ninterpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is\nthat the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and\nrear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God\nand the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great\nplatform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made\na missionary speech in her life, and at a missionary meeting I doubt\nwhether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she\nraised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating\nreligious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not\nthat a better thing to do?\n\nCompare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing,\nfrivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an\nopera box on the night of Meyerbeer's \"Robert le Diable,\" the ten\ncommandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the\ncomplexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,\nbleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to\ndiscuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent\nand indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.\n\n\nA PRESSING WANT.\n\nWhat the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned\nmothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest\ninstitution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should\nhave the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the\nold-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry\nwore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the\nMother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture days, and was demonstrated\non the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house\nlong ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet\nuntil in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous.\nWhile there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than\nthere ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and\nthere are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief\nsphere is outside instead of inside the home.\n\n\nA DEADLY SIN.\n\nHence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a\nnuisance. It is card case _versus_ child's primer, carriage _versus_\ncradle, social popularity _versus_ domestic felicity. Hence\ninfanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians,\nallopathic, hydropathic, homoeopathic, and eclectic are crying out in\nhorror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical\nprofession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which\nsays: \"Thou shalt not kill,\" and the book of Revelation, which says:\n\"All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with\nfire and brimstone.\" And the man or the woman who takes life a minute\nold will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who\ndestroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriek of\nJudgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the\nhigh and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their\nown act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination\nof the advancing generations, abetted in the horrid crime by a lot of\ninfernal quacks with which modern medicine is infested. When, on the\nLast Day, the crier of the Court shall with resounding \"Oyez,\" \"Oyez!\"\ndeclare the \"Oyer and Terminer\" of the Universe opened, and the Judge,\nwith gavel of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations into silence, and\nthe trial of all the fratricides, and parricides, and matricides, and\npatricides, and uxoricides, and regicides, and deicides, and\ninfanticides of the earth shall proceed, none of my hearers or readers\ncan say that they knew not what they were doing. Mighty God! arrest\nthe evil that is overshadowing this century.\n\n\nTHE HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD.\n\nI charge you, my sister, that you take your husband along with you to\nheaven. Of course this implies that you yourself are a Christian. I\nmust take that for granted. It cannot be possible that after what\nChristianity has done for woman, and after taking the infinitely\nresponsible position you have assumed as the head of the household,\nthat you should be in a position antagonistic to Christ. It was not a\nslip of the tongue when I spoke of you as being at the head of the\nhousehold. We men rather pride ourselves as being at the head of the\nhousehold, but it is only a pleasant delusion. To whom do the children\ngo when they have trouble? When there is a sore finger to be bound up\nor one of the first teeth that needs to be removed to make way for one\nthat is crowding it out, to whom does the child go? For whom do\nchildren cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream?\nAye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too\ngreat or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the\nhousehold in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in\nfact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the\nkingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven.\n\nYou can do it! Of course God's almighty grace alone can convert him,\nbut you are to be the instrument. Some wives keep their husbands out\nof heaven, and others garner them for it. If your religion, O wife! is\nsimply the joke of the household, if you would rather go to the\ntheatre than the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the neighborhood\nin progressive euchre, if your husband never sees you kneel at the\nbedside in prayer before retiring, if the only thing that reminds the\nfamily of your church relations is that on communion-day you get home\nlate to dinner, you will not be able to take your husband to heaven,\nfor the simple reason that you will not get there yourself. But I\nsuppose that your religion is genuine, and that the husband realizes\nthat there is in your soul a divine principle, and that, though you\nmay be naturally quicker tempered than he is and have many\nimperfections that distress you more than they can any one else, still\nyou are destined for the skies when the brief scenes of this life are\nover. How will you take him with you? There are two oars to that\nboat--prayer and holy example.\n\nBut you say he belongs to a worldly club, or he does not believe a\nword of the Bible, or he is an inebriate and very loose in his habits?\nWhat you tell me shows that you don't understand that while you are at\nthe one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God is at the other end, and\nit is simply a question whether Almightiness is strong enough and\nkeeps His word. I have no doubt there will be great conventions in\nheaven, called for celebrative purposes, and when in some Celestial\nassemblage the saints shall be telling what brought them to God, I\nbelieve that ten thousand times ten thousand will say: \"My wife.\"\n\n\nA CONTRAST.\n\nI put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives,\nand let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his\nsalvation. With tearful emotion he said: \"My wife was brought to God\nsome years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her\nreligion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly\nmaintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was\nher amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first\nsent the arrows of conviction to my soul.\" The other testimony was\nfrom a dying man: \"Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family\nworship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to\nneglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet,\nyou are the cause of my everlasting ruin.\" How many glorious married\ncouples in heaven--Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and\nDeborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth,\nJoseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of\nthem!\n\nAs once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's\nhouse, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up,\nhusband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I\nproclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I\npronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and\nthat is the shape of the Wedding Ring.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] As Abigail did (1 Sam. 25:25).\n\n\n\n\nCOSTUME AND MORALS.\n\n    \"Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are\n    haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,\n    walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their\n    feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their\n    tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their\n    round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and\n    the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and\n    the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and\n    nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,\n    and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the\n    fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils,\"--ISAIAH 3:16,\n    18-23.[2]\n\n\nThis is a Jerusalem fashion plate. It puts us two thousand six hundred\nyears back, and sets us down in an ancient city. The procession of men\nand women is moving up and down the gay streets. It is the height of\nthe fashionable season. The sensible men and women move with so much\nmodesty that they do not attract our attention. But here come the\nhaughty daughters of Jerusalem! They lean forward; they lean very much\nforward--so far forward as to be unnatural--teetering, wobbling,\nwriggling, flirting, or, as my text describes it, they \"walk with\nstretched-forth necks, walking and mincing as they go.\"\n\nSee! That is a princess. Look! That is a Damascus sword-maker. Look!\nThat is a Syrian merchant. The jingling of the chains, and the lashing\nof the headbands, and the exhibitions of universal swagger attract the\nattention of the Prophet Isaiah, and he brings his camera to bear upon\nthe scene, and takes a picture for all the ages. But where is that\nscene? Vanished. Where are those gay streets? Vermin-covered\npopulation pass through them. Where are the hands, and the necks, and\nthe foreheads, and the shoulders, and the feet that sported all that\nmagnificence? Ashes! Ashes!\n\nThat we should all be clad is proved by the opening of\n\n\nTHE FIRST WARDROBE\n\nin Paradise, with its apparel of dark green. That we should all as far\nas our means allow us be beautifully and gracefully apparelled is\nproved by the fact that God never made a wave but He gilded it with\ngolden sunbeams, or a tree but He garlanded it with blossoms, or a\nsky but He studded it with stars, or allowed even the smoke of a\nfurnace to ascend but He columned, and turreted, and doled, and\nscrolled it into outlines of indescribable gracefulness. When I see\nthe apple orchards of the spring and the pageantry of the autumnal\nforests, I come to the conclusion that if nature ever does join the\nChurch, while she may be a Quaker in the silence of her worship, she\nnever will be a Quaker in the style of her dress. Why the notches of a\nfern leaf or the stamen of a water lily? Why, when the day departs,\ndoes it let the folding doors of heaven stay open so long, when it\nmight go in so quickly? One summer morning I saw an army of a million\nspears, each one adorned with a diamond of the first water--I mean the\ngrass with the dew on it.\n\nWhen the prodigal came home his father not only put a coat on his\nback, but jewelry on his hand. Christ wore a beard, Paul, the bachelor\napostle, not afflicted with any sentimentality, admired the\narrangement of a woman's hair, when he said in his epistle: \"If a\nwoman have long hair, it is a glory unto her.\" There will be fashion\nin heaven as on earth, but it will be a different kind of fashion. It\nwill decide the color of the dress; and the population of that\ncountry, by a beautiful law, will wear white.\n\n\nTHE GODDESS OF FASHION.\n\nI say these things as a background to my sermon, to show you that I\nhave no prim, precise, prudish, or cast-iron theories on the subject\nof human apparel; but the goddess of fashion has set up her throne in\nthis country and at the sound of the timbrels we are all expected to\nfall down and worship. Her altars smoke with the sacrifice of the\nbodies and souls of ten thousand victims.\n\nWhen I come to count the victims of fashion I find as many masculine\nas feminine. Men make an easy tirade against woman, as though she were\nthe chief worshipper at this idolatrous shrine, and no doubt some men\nin the more conspicuous part of the pew have already cast glances at\nthe more retired part of the pew, their look a prophecy of a generous\ndistribution. My sermon shall be as appropriate for one end of the pew\nas for the other.\n\n\nMASCULINE FOLLIES.\n\nMen are as much the idolaters of fashion as women, but they sacrifice\non a different part of the altar. With men the fashion goes to cigars,\nand club-rooms, and yachting parties, and wine suppers. In the United\nStates the men chew up and smoke one hundred millions of dollars'\nworth of tobacco every year. That is their fashion. In London not\nlong ago a man died who started in life with $750,000; but he ate it\nall up in gluttonies, sending his agents to all parts of the earth for\nsome rare delicacy for the palate, sometimes one plate of food costing\nhim three or four hundred dollars. He ate up his whole fortune, and\nhad only one guinea left. With that he bought a woodcock, and had it\ndressed in the very best style, ate it, gave two hours for digestion,\nthen walked out on Westminster Bridge and threw himself into the\nThames and died, doing on a large scale what you and I have often seen\ndone on a small scale.\n\nBut men do not abstain from millinery and elaboration of skirt through\nany superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages\nwould be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three\nand a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the\ndisciples of custom just as much as women. Some of them wear boots so\ntight that they can hardly walk in the paths of righteousness, and\nthere are men who buy expensive suits of clothes and never pay for\nthem, and who go through the streets in great stripes of color, like\nanimated checkerboards. I say these things because I want to show you\nthat I am impartial in my discourse, and that both sexes, in the\nlanguage of the surrogate's office, \"share and share alike.\"\n\n\nINDELICATE APPAREL.\n\nAs God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of\nimproper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple\ntruth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it,\nthat much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the\ntemporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a\nshamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for\nvehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can\ncome to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of\nmasculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided\nreformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer\nof the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a\nso-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel,\nordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself\nimmediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make\nvehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of\nthe household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the\nfemale costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and\nthat fathers prohibit their daughters. The evil is terrific and\novershadowing.\n\n\nSTAGE COSTUMES.\n\nI suppose that the American stage is responsible for much of this. I\ndo not go to the theatres, so I must take the evidence of the actors\nand managers of theatres, such as Mr. John Gilbert, Mr. A.M. Palmer,\nand Mr. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have recently told us that the crime\nof undress is blasting the theatre, which by many is considered a\nschool of morals, and indeed superior to the Church, and a forerunner\nof the millennium. Mr. Palmer says: \"The bulk of the performances on\nthe stage are degrading and pernicious. The managers strive to come\njust as near the line as possible without flagrantly breaking the law.\nThere never have been costumes worn on a stage of this city, either in\na theatre, hall, or 'dive,' so improper as those that clothe some of\nthe chorus in recent comic opera productions.\" He says in regard to\nthe female performers: \"It is not a question whether they can sing,\nbut just how little they will consent to wear.\" Mr. Bandmann, who has\nbeen twenty-nine years on the stage, and before almost all\nnationalities, says: \"I unhesitatingly state that the taste of the\npresent theatre-going people of America, as a body, is of a coarse and\nvulgar nature. The Hindoo would turn with disgust at such\nexhibitions, which are sought after and applauded on the stage of this\ncountry. Our shop windows are full of and the walls covered with show\ncards and posters which should be a disgrace to an enlightened country\nand an insult to the eye of a cultured community.\" Mr. Gilbert says:\n\"Such exhibition is a disastrous one to the morals of the community.\nAre these proper pictures to put out for the public to look at, to say\nnothing of the propriety of females appearing in public dressed like\nthat? It is shameful!\"\n\nI must take the testimony of the friends of the theatre and the\nconfirmation which I see on the board fences and in the show windows\ncontaining the pictures of the way actresses dress. I suppose that\nthose representations of play-house costume are true, for if they are\nnot true, then those highly moral and religious theatres are swindling\nthe public by inducing the people to the theatre by promises of\nspectacular nudity which they do not fulfill. Now, all this\nfamiliarizes the public with such improprieties of costume and\ndepresses the public conscience as to what is allowable and right.\n\n\nDRAWING-ROOM RIVALRY.\n\nThe parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre\nand opera bouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the\nlatter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining\non the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass\nthe stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will\nclap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half\nbecause the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform,\nand pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly\nattire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor\nadjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the\nfashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of\nFrance, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of\nmorals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.\nModest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means\na contaminated and depraved society.\n\n\nEXTRAVAGANCE.\n\nIt is not only such boldness that is to be reprehended, but\nextravagance of costume. This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable\nand ghastly. Do you know that Arnold of the Revolution proposed to\nsell his country in order to get money to support his home wardrobe? I\ndeclare here before God and this people that the effort to keep up\nexpensive establishments in this country is sending more business men\nto temporal perdition than all other causes combined. It was this that\nsent prominent business men to the watering of stocks, and life\ninsurance presidents to perjured statements about their assets, and\nsome of them to the penitentiary, and has completely upset our\nAmerican finances.\n\nBut why should I go to these famous defaultings, to show what men will\ndo in order to keep up great home style and expensive wardrobe, when\nyou and I know scores of men who are put to their wit's end and are\nlashed from January to December in the attempt? Our Washington\npoliticians may theorize until the expiration of their terms of office\nas to the best way of improving our monetary condition in this\ncountry. It will be of no use, and things will be no better until we\nlearn to put on our heads and backs and feet and hands no more than we\ncan pay for.\n\n\nAN INCENTIVE TO DISHONESTY.\n\nThere are clerks in stores and banks on limited salaries who in the\nvain attempt to keep the wardrobe of their family as showy as other\nfolk's wardrobes are dying of muffs, and diamonds, and camel's-hair\nshawls, and high hats, and they have nothing left except what they\ngive to cigars and wine suppers, and they die before their time, and\nthey will expect us ministers to preach about them as though they were\nthe victims of early piety; and after a high-class funeral, with\nsilver handles at the side of their coffin of extraordinary\nbrightness, it will be found out that the undertaker is cheated out of\nhis legitimate expenses! Do not send to me to preach the funeral\nsermon of a man who dies like that. I would blurt out the whole truth,\nand tell that he was strangled to death by his wife's ribbons! The\ncountry is dressed to death.\n\nYou are not surprised to find that the putting up of one public\nbuilding in New York cost millions of dollars more than it ought to\nhave cost, when you find that the man who gave out the contracts paid\nmore than five thousand dollars for his daughter's wedding dress.\nCashmeres of a thousand dollars each are not rare on Broadway. It is\nestimated that there are eight thousand women in these two cities who\nhave expended on their personal array two thousand dollars a year.\n\nWhat are the men to do in order to keep up such home wardrobes?\nSteal--that is the only respectable thing they can do! During the last\nfifteen years there have been innumerable fine business men\nshipwrecked on the wardrobe. The temptation comes in this way: a man\nthinks more of his family than all the world outside, and if they\nspend the evening in describing to him the superior wardrobe of the\nfamily across the street that they cannot bear the sight of, the man\nis thrown on his gallantry and his pride of family, and without\ntranslating his feelings into plain language, he goes into extortion\nand issuing of false stock and skillful penmanship in writing somebody\nelse's name at the foot of a promissory note; and they all go down\ntogether--the husband to the prison, the wife to the sewing machine,\nthe children to be taken care of by those who were called poor\nrelations. Oh, for some new Shakespeare to arise and write\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF CLOTHES!\n\nAct the first of the tragedy: A plain but beautiful home. Enter the\nnewly married pair. Enter simplicity of manner and behavior. Enter as\nmuch happiness as is ever found in one home.\n\nAct the second: Discontent with the humble home. Enter envy. Enter\njealousy. Enter desire to display.\n\nAct the third: Enlargement of expenses. Enter all the queenly\ndressmakers. Enter the French milliners.\n\nAct the fourth: The tip-top of society. Enter princes and princesses\nof New York life. Enter magnificent plate and equipage. Enter\neverything splendid.\n\nAct the fifth and last, winding up the scene: Enter the assignee.\nEnter the sheriff. Enter the creditors. Enter humiliation. Enter the\nwrath of God. Enter the contempt of society. Enter death. Now, let the\nsilk curtain drop on the stage. The farce is ended, and the lights are\nout.\n\nWill you forgive me if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of\nthe men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle\nto pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me\nor not.\n\n\nCURTAILS BENEVOLENCE.\n\nAgain, extravagant costume is the foe of all Christian alms-giving.\nMen and women put so much in personal display that they often have\nnothing for God and the cause of suffering humanity--a Christian man\ncracking his Palais Royal gloves across the back by shutting up his\nhand to hide the one cent he puts into the poor box! a Christian woman\nat the story of the Hottentots crying copious tears into a twenty-five\ndollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the\ncollection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know\nbut it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to\nfashion--two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every\ndollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him.\nIs not God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the\nOld Testament--is not God liberal in giving us ninety cents out of a\ndollar when he takes but ten? We do not like that. We want to have\nninety-nine cents for ourselves and one for God.\n\nNow, I would a great deal rather steal ten cents from you than God. I\nthink one reason why a great many people do not get along in worldly\naccumulation faster is because they do not observe this Divine rule.\nGod says: \"Well, if that man is not satisfied with ninety cents out of\na dollar, then I will take the whole dollar, and I will give it to the\nman or woman who is honest with me.\" The greatest obstacle to charity\nin the Christian church to-day is the fact that men expend so much on\ntheir table, and women so much on their dress, they have got nothing\nleft for the work of God and the world's betterment.\n\n\nDISTRACTS ATTENTION.\n\nAgain, extravagant costume is distraction to a public worship. You\nknow very well there are a good many people who go to church just as\nthey go to the races, to see who will come out first. Men and women\nwith souls to be saved passing the hour in wondering where that man\ngot his cravat, or what store that woman patronizes. In many of our\nchurches the preliminary exercises are taken up with the discussion\nof wardrobes. It is pitiable. Is it not wonderful that the Lord does\nnot strike the meeting-houses with lightning? What distraction of\npublic worship! Dying men and women, whose bodies are soon to be\nturned into dust, yet before three worlds strutting like peacocks.\nPeople sitting down in a pew or taking up a hymn book, all absorbed at\nthe same time in personal array, to sing:\n\n    \"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,\n      Thy better portion trace;\n    Rise from transitory things\n      Toward heaven, thy native place!\"\n\nI adopt the Episcopalian prayer, and say: \"Good Lord, deliver us!\"\n\n\nMENTAL IMPOVERISHMENT.\n\nExtravagant costume belittles the intellect. Our minds are enlarged or\nthey dwindle just in proportion to the importance of the subject on\nwhich we constantly dwell. Can you imagine anything more dwarfing to\nthe human intellect than the study of dress? I see men on the street\nwho, judging from their elaboration, I think must have taken two hours\nto arrange their apparel. After a few years of that kind of\nabsorption, which one of McAllister's magnifying glasses will be\npowerful enough to make the man's character visible? What will be left\nof a woman's intellect after giving years and years to the discussion\nof such questions? They all land in idiocy. I have seen men at the\nsummer watering-places through fashion the mere wreck of what they\nonce were. Sallow of cheek. Meagre of limb. Hollow at the chest.\nShowing no animation save in rushing across a room to pick up a lady's\nfan. Simpering along the corridors the same compliments they simpered\ntwenty years ago.\n\n\nBARS HEAVEN.\n\nYet, my friends, I have given you only the milder phase of this evil.\nIt shuts a great multitude out of heaven. The first peal of thunder\nthat shook Sinai declared: \"Thou shalt have no other gods before me,\"\nand you will have to choose between the goddess of fashion and the\nChristian God. There are a great many seats in heaven, and they are\nall easy seats, but not one seat for the devotee of costume. Heaven is\nfor meek and quiet spirits. Heaven is for those who think more of\ntheir souls than of their bodies.\n\nGive up this idolatry of fashion or give up heaven. What would you do\nstanding beside the Countess of Huntingdon, whose joy it was to build\nchapels for the poor; or with that Christian woman of Boston, who fed\nfifteen hundred children of the street, at Fanueil Hall, one New\nYear's Day, giving out as a sort of doxology at the end of the\nmeeting a pair of shoes to each one of them; or those Dorcases of\nmodern society who have consecrated their needles to the Lord, and who\nwill get eternal reward for every stitch they take?\n\n\nPERPETUAL ENVY.\n\nOh, men and women, give up the idolatry of costume! The rivalries and\nthe competitions of such a life are a stupendous wretchedness. You\nwill always find some one with brighter array, and with more palatial\nresidence, and with lavender kid gloves that make a tighter fit. And\nif you buy this thing and wear it you will wish you had bought\nsomething else and worn it. And the frets of such a life will bring\nthe crow's feet to your temples before they are due, and when you come\nto die you will have a miserable time.\n\nI have seen men and women of excessive costume die, and I never saw\none of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled\npillow, and there were just two things that bothered them--a wasted\nlife and a coming eternity. I could not pacify them, for their body,\nmind, and soul had been exhausted in the worship of costume, and they\ncould not appreciate the Gospel. When I knelt by their bedside they\nwere mumbling out their regrets, and saying: \"O God! O God!\" Their\ngarments hung up in the wardrobe never again to be seen by them.\nWithout any exception, so far as my memory serves me, they died\nwithout hope, and went into eternity unprepared. The two most ghastly\ndeath-beds on earth are the one where a man dies of delirium tremens,\nand the other where a woman dies after having sacrificed all her\nfaculties of body, mind and soul in the worship of costume.\n\n\nJUDGMENT TO COME.\n\nMy friends, we must appear in judgment to answer for what we have worn\non our bodies as well as for what repentances we have exercised with\nour souls. On that day I see coming in Beau Brummell of the last\ncentury without his cloak; Aaron Burr, without the letters that to old\nage he showed in pride, to prove his early wicked gallantries; and\nAbsalom without his hair; and Marchioness Pompadour without her\ntitles; and Mrs. Arnold, the belle of Wall Street, when that was the\ncentre of fashion, without her fripperies of vesture.\n\nAnd in great haggardness they shall go away into eternal expatriation,\nwhile among the queens of heavenly society will be found Vashti, who\nwore the modest veil before the palatial bacchanalians; and Hannah,\nwho annually made a little coat for Samuel at the temple; and\nGrandmother Lois, the ancestress of Timothy, who imitated her virtue;\nand Mary, who gave Jesus Christ to the world; and many of you, the\nwives, and mothers, and sisters, and daughters of the present\nChristian church who, through great tribulation, are entering into the\nkingdom of God. Christ announced who would make up the royal family of\nheaven when He said: \"Whosoever doeth the will of God, the same is my\nbrother, my sister, my mother.\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[2] The list of feminine treasures given by the Revised Version is more\nintelligible. It is: \"Their anklets, and the networks, and the\ncrescents; the pendants, and the bracelets, and the mufflers; the\nhead-tires, and the ankle chains, and the sashes, and the perfume boxes,\nand the amulets; the rings, and the nose-jewels; the festival robes, and\nthe mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels; the hand-mirrors, and the\nfine linen, and the turbans, and the veils.\"\n\n\n\n\nHUSBANDS AND WIVES.\n\n    \"Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;\n    and the wife see that she reverence her husband.\"--EPHESIANS\n    5:33.\n\n\nAll this good advice by a man who never married. He lived on to\nfifty-eight years of age, in eminent bachelorhood. Indeed, it was\nbetter for Paul to remain in single life, because he went on such\nrapid missionary expeditions that no companion could have endured the\nhardship. Celibacy in some cases is better. Such persons accomplish\nunder such circumstances that which could not be accomplished in the\nother style of life.\n\nI have known men who remain unaffianced in order that they might take\ncare of the children of a deceased brother; and what would become of\nthe world without the self-sacrifice and helpfulness of the maiden\naunts I cannot imagine.\n\nAmong the brightest queens of Heaven will be those who took care of\nother people's children. Alas for that household which has not within\neasy call an Aunt Mary! I know that there are caricatures, and\nungallant things sometimes said; but so far as my observation goes,\nthey are quite equal in disposition to their married sisters. The\nstate of celibacy is honored again by such persons as Macaulay and\nWashington Irving in literature, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix\nin philanthropy.\n\nBut while Paul remained in the single state, he kept his eyes open,\nand he looked off upon the calm sea of married life, and upon the\nchopped sea of domestic perturbation. He comes forth in my text to\nsay, \"Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself;\nand the wife see that she reverence her husband;\" implying that the\nwife ought to be lovable, so there might be something to love, and the\nman ought to be honorable, so there might be something to reverence.\n\nIt is\n\n\nA MOST CONGRATULATORY THOUGHT\n\nthat the vast majority of people in the married state are well mated.\nWhen the news is first announced in the outside world of the\nbetrothal, there may be surprise and seeming incongruity, but as the\nyears pass by it is demonstrated that the selection was divinely\narranged. There may be great difference of temperament, great\ndifference of appearance, great difference of circumstances. That is\nno objection. The sanguine and the phlegmatic temperaments make\nappropriate union, the blonde and the brunette, the quick and the\nslow, the French and the German. In the machinery of domestic life\nthere is no more need for the driving wheel than for the brakes. That\nis the best union generally which has just the opposites.\n\nThe best argument in behalf of marriage as a divine institution is the\nfact that the vast majority of conjugal relationships are the very\nbest things that could have happened. Once in a while there is a\nresounding exception to the good rule, the attempt being made to marry\nfire and gunpowder, with the consequent explosion in the divorce\ncourts; but in the vast majority of instances the conjugal relation is\na beautiful illustration of what the Psalmist said when he declared,\n\"God setteth the solitary in families.\"\n\nTaking it for granted, then, that you are well mated, I proceed to\ngive you some\n\n\nPRESCRIPTIONS FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS;\n\nand, first of all, I remark:\n\nI. A spirit of compromise must be dominant. You must remember that you\nwere twenty or thirty years forming independent habits and having your\nown way. In the marriage state these habits must be brought into\naccord, and there may be some ingenuity necessary. Be determined to\nhave your own way, and there will be no peace. Let the rule be: In\nall matters of moral principle your determination shall be iron, and\nin all unimportant matters, willow. Whatever you may think of the word\ncompromise in politics, without compromise there is no domestic peace.\nA great many people are willing to compromise, if you will do just as\nthey want you to do; but there is no compromise in that. The rule\nought to be: In all domestic matters, all social matters, all\necclesiastical matters, all political matters, firm adherence to\nfundamentals, easy surrender in non-essentials. Be not too proud or\ntoo stubborn to give up. Compromise! Compromise!\n\nII. I remark, again, that in order to domestic happiness there must be\na spirit of\n\n\nCONSULTATION.\n\nThe home ought to be a cabinet, where all the affairs of the household\nand all the affairs of business life come under comparison, inspection\nand advisal. That is an absurd rule we hear abroad in the world, that\nmen ought never to take their business home. Ten thousand financial\nfailures would have been avoided if men had consulted with their\nwives.\n\nIn the first place, woman has a capacity to judge of moral character\nwhich man has not. Before you invite into your business partnership\nany man, you ought to introduce him to your wife, and get her judgment\nas to his capacity and his integrity. After five minutes' conversation\nshe will tell you as much about him as you will know at the close of\ntwenty years, and perhaps you may find out too late.\n\nA man proposes to come into your business partnership. You take him to\nyour home. He tarries a little while, and is gone. You say to your\nwife, \"Well, what do you think of him?\" She says, \"I don't like him at\nall.\" You say, \"It's an absurd thing to form a prejudice against him\non so short an acquaintance. I have known him for years, and I have\nnever known any bad against him.\" \"Well,\" she says, \"I don't know why\nI have formed that opinion, but I tell you to beware. Put none of your\nfinancial interests in that man's keeping.\" Ten or fifteen years pass\nby. You come home some night and say, \"Well, my dear, you are right;\nthat man swindled me out of my last dollar.\" It is not because woman\nis wiser than man. It is because God has given her that peculiar\nintuition in regard to human character.\n\nNow, you have no right to go into an enterprise which involves the\nhomestead, or the education of your children, or the fate of your\nentire family, without home consultation. Of course, all this implies\nthat you did not marry a fool. If at the marriage altar you committed\nsuicide, you had better keep all your business affairs in your own\nheart and head. But let us hope that you have sound common sense\npresiding in your household.\n\n\nA BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT.\n\nHow much a wife may help a husband's business affairs was well\nillustrated in the case where the wife saved from the allowance of\nherself and the allowance of the family, a certain amount of money for\na rainy day. After some time the husband, coming home, said: \"Well,\nI'm going to suspend payment to-morrow. A few dollars would get me\nthrough, but I can't get the few dollars, and I'm going to ruin.\" That\nevening the wife said: \"I wish you would hunt up the definition of the\nword 'independence' in Webster's Dictionary. Hunt it up for me.\" He\nopened Webster's Dictionary, and found the word \"independence,\" and\nright opposite was a $100 bill. \"Now,\" she said, \"I would like to have\nyou find the word 'gratitude.'\" He turned to the word \"gratitude,\" and\nthere was another $100 bill. And before the evening was past she asked\nhim to read a verse of a certain chapter of the Bible. He opened to\nthe verse in the Bible, and there were $500, and before the evening\nhad passed, the man had financial relief to tide him over his\ndisasters. You call that dramatic. I call that beautifully Christian.\n\nIn all expenditures there ought to be consultation. Do not dole out\nmoney to your wife as though she were a beggar. Let her know how much\nyou have, or how little. Appeal to her intelligent judgment, and she\nwill be content, and your own disposition will not be irritated. As\nlong as you keep a mystery about your business matters she will wonder\nthat the allowance is so small. No honorable woman wants to spend more\nmoney than can be afforded. Come into consultation with her on this\nmatter. Show what are all your necessary outside expenses, all the\nmoney you have for cigars and dinners at Delmonico's, and how much it\ntakes for the club-house and for the political campaign, and then have\nher present all the domestic expenses, and then, after consultation do\nyour best.\n\nIt is a bad sign when a man dare not tell his business transactions to\nhis wife. There is something wrong. Suppose you that the gigantic\nforgeries which have been enacted in this country would ever have\ntaken place if the wife had been consulted? The wife would have said,\n\"Stop! Let us live in one room in the poorest house on the poorest\nstreet of the poorest town, and have nothing but dry bread rather than\nthat you should make yourself culpable before God and the law.\" In\nthe vast majority of cases where there has been exposure of great\nfrauds, the wife has been the most surprised person in the community.\n\n\nA BANKER\n\nsome time ago misused trust funds, and he went from fraud to fraud,\nand from knavery to knavery, until it was necessary for him to leave\nhome before daylight. His wife said: \"Where are you going?\" \"I am\ngoing to New York,\" said he \"I am going on the early train.\" \"Why,\nisn't this sudden?\" she asked. \"Oh, no; I expected to go,\" and then he\nleft the room and went up to the room where his daughters slept,\nlooked upon their calm faces for the last time, as he supposed, and\nstarted. He was brought back by the constables of an outraged law, and\nis now in the penitentiary.\n\nDo you suppose that man, with a good wife, as he had, an honest wife,\nas he had, a Christian wife, as he had, could have got into such an\nenormity if he had consulted in regard to her wishes? Consultation is\nthe word--domestic consultation.\n\nIII. Again: in order to domestic happiness, there must, in the\nconjugal state, be\n\n\nNO SECRETS\n\nkept one from the other. What one knows both must know. It is a bad\nsign when one partner in the conjugal relation is afraid to have the\nletters opened or read by the other partner. Surreptitious\ncorrespondence is always dangerous. If a man comes to you and says, \"I\nam going to tell you a great privacy, and don't want you to tell\nanybody, not even your wife,\" say to him, \"Well, now, you had better\nnot tell me, for I shall tell her as soon as I get home.\"\n\nThere must be no secrecy of association. You ought not to be unwilling\nto tell where you have been, and with whom you have been. Sometimes an\nunwise wife will have a lady confidante whom she makes a depository of\nprivacies which they are pledged to keep between themselves. Beware!\nAnything that implies that husband and wife are two and not one\nimplies peril, domestic peril, social peril, mighty peril.\n\nIn the vast majority of cases of domestic infelicity coming to\nexposure in the courts, the trouble began by the accidental opening of\na letter which implied correspondence which was never suspected. In\nthe conjugal relations, secrets kept one from another are\nnitro-glycerine under the hearthstone, and the fuse is lighted!\n\nIV. Again: in order to your happiness there must be a spirit of\n\n\nFORBEARANCE.\n\nIn the weeks, the months, the years that you were planning for each\nother's conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was\nobservable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known\nthe one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you\nare one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of\nfaults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having\nfound out all of each others imperfections, forbear.\n\nIf the one be given to too much precision, and the other disorderly in\nhabits; if the one be spendthrift and the other oversaving; if the one\nbe loquacious, and the other reticent, forbear. Especially, if you\nboth have inflammable tempers, do not both get mad at once. Take turn\nabout! William Cowper put it well when he said:\n\n    \"The kindest and the happiest pair\n    Will find occasion to forbear;\n    And something every day they live\n    To pity, and perhaps forgive.\"\n\nV. Again: in order to your happiness, let there be no interfering with\neach other's peculiar\n\n\nRELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.\n\nIf you are a Baptist and your wife a Pedo-Baptist, do not go to\nsplashing water into each other's faces! If you are a Presbyterian and\nyour husband is a Methodist, when he shouts \"Hallelujah!\" do not get\nnervous.\n\nIf you have strong denominational proclivities, one of you had better\ngo to one church, and the other had better go to another church; or,\nsurrendering some of your intensity on that subject, as in hundreds of\ncases, come to some such church as the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where,\nwhile we adhere to the fundamentals of the Gospel, we do not care a\nrye straw for the infinitesimal differences between evangelical\ndenominations--putting one drop of water on the brow, if that is\nenough baptism, and if not, then plunging the candidate clear out of\nsight, if that is preferred--not caring whether you believe you have\nbeen foreordained to be saved or not, if you are only saved; nor\nwhether you believe in the perseverance of the saints or not, if you\nwill only persevere; nor whether you prefer prayer by Episcopal\nliturgy or extemporaneous supplication, if you only pray.\n\nDo not let there be any religious contests across the breakfast table\nor the tea table. It makes but little difference from what direction\nyou come toward the riven heart of Christ, if you only come up to the\nriven heart. Yet, I know in many families there is constant picking at\nopposite religious beliefs, and attempt at proselytism. You, the\nfather, fight for Episcopacy, and you, the mother, fight for\nPresbyterianism, and your children will compromise the matter and be\nNothingarians!\n\nVI. Again: I counsel you, in order to your domestic happiness, that\nyou\n\n\nCULTIVATE EACH OTHER'S RELIGIOUS WELFARE.\n\nThis is a profoundly agitating thought to every fair-minded man and\nwoman. You live, together on earth; you want to live together forever.\nYou do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your\nassociation, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God\nwith you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is\nbecause you do not understand Christian stratagem.\n\nEvery Christian companion may take his or her companion into glory.\nHow? Ask God, and he will tell you how. Perhaps by occasional\nreligious remark. Perhaps by earnest prayer. Perhaps by a consistent\nlife. More probably by all these things combined. Paul put it\nforcefully when he said: \"How knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt\nsave thy husband? how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy\nwife?\" In this house, how many have been remarried for the skies!\n\nIt has become so much the general rule that when in my congregation,\nas I often do, I find a family in which the wife is a Christian, and\nthe husband is not, I just say frankly to him: \"Now you have got to\ncome in. You might just as well try to swim up against Niagara rapids\nas against the tide of religious influence which in this church is\ngoing to surge you into the kingdom of God. You must come in. You know\nthat your wife is right in this matter of religion. She may be quick\nof temper, and you may sometimes lose your patience with her, but you\nknow she is better than you are, and you know when she dies she will\ngo as straight to heaven as a shot to a target.\n\n\"And, if to-day, on the way home, a vehicle should dash down the\nstreet, and she should fall lifeless, with no opportunity for last\nwords, you might have a doubt about what would become of you, and a\ndoubt about what would become of the children, but you would have no\ndoubt about her eternal destiny. Somewhere under the flush of her\ncheek, or under the pallor of her brow is the Lord's mark. She is your\nwife, but she is God's child, and you are not jealous of that\nrelationship. You only wish that you yourself were a son of the Lord\nAlmighty. Come and have the matter settled. If I die before you, I\nwill not forget in the next world how you stood together here, but I\nwill expect both of you. You must come.\n\n\"I say it in all Christian love and emphasis, as a brother talks to a\nbrother. You must come. You have been united so long, you cannot\nafford to have death divorce you. How long it is since you began the\nstruggle of life together! You have helped each other on the road, and\nwhat you have done for each other God only knows. There have been\ntedious sicknesses, and anxious watching, and here and there a grave,\nshort but very deep; and though the blossoms of the marriage day may\nhave scattered, and the lips that pronounced you one may have gone\ninto dust, you have through all these years been to each other true as\nsteel.\n\n\"Now, to-day, I am going to remarry you for heaven. This is the bridal\nday of your soul's peace. Here is the marriage altar. Kneel side by\nside, take the oath of eternal fidelity, clasp hands in a covenant\nnever to be broken. I pronounce you one on earth, I pronounce you one\nfor eternity. What God by His grace hath joined together, let not\nearth or hell put asunder. Hark! I hear a humming in the air--an\nanthem--a wedding march--organs celestial played upon by fingers\nseraphic.\"\n\nI do not think I ever read anything more beautiful and quaintly\npathetic than\n\n\nCOTTON MATHER'S DESCRIPTION\n\nof the departure of his wife from earth to Heaven: \"The black day\narrives. I had never seen so black a day in all the time of my\npilgrimage. The desire of my eyes is this day to be taken from me at\na stroke. Her death is lingering and painful. All the forenoon of this\nday she was in the pangs of death, and sensible until the last minute\nor two before her final expiration. I cannot remember the discourse\nthat passed between us, only her devout soul was full of satisfaction\nabout her going to a state of blessedness with the Lord Jesus Christ.\nAs far as my distress would permit, I studied to confirm her\nsatisfaction and consolation.\n\n\"When I saw to what a point of resignation I was called of the Lord, I\nresolved, with His help, to glorify Him. So, two hours before she\nexpired, I knelt by her bedside and took into my hands that dear hand,\nthe dearest in the world, and solemnly and sincerely gave her up to\nthe Lord. I gently put her out of my hands and laid away her hand,\nresolved that I would not touch it again. She afterward told me that\nshe signed and sealed my act of resignation, and though before that\nshe had called for me continually, after it she never asked for me any\nmore. She conversed much until near two in the afternoon. The last\nsensible word she spoke was to her weeping father: 'Heaven, Heaven\nwill make amends for all!'\"\n\nNow let us be faithful in this relation of which I have been speaking.\nDo you want to know\n\n\nWHAT THE LORD THINKS OF IT?\n\nRead the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, where he says: \"As the\nbridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over\nthee.\" There is a wedding coming which will eclipse all the princely\nand imperial weddings the world ever saw. It was a great day when\nNapoleon took Josephine; it was a great day when Henry VIII. led Anne\nBoleyn over the cloth of gold on the street, the cloth of gold\nreaching up to the palace; it was a great day when the King of Spain\ntook Mercedes; but there will be a greater time when the Lord shall\ntake His bride, the Church, to Himself.\n\nLong time ago they were affianced, but she has been down in the\nwilderness. He has written her again and again, and the day of\nmarriage is fixed. She has sent word to Him. He has sent word to her.\nBut, oh! was there ever such a difference in estate? The King on the\none side, the bride of the wilderness, poor and persecuted, on the\nother. The wealth of the universe on the one side, the obscurity of\nthe ages on the other. The pomp of heaven on the one side, the poverty\nof earth on the other. But He will endow her with all His wealth, and\nraise her to sit with Him on a throne forever.\n\nCome, thou bridal morn of the ages! Come! and there shall be the\nrumbling of great wheels, great chariot wheels down the sky, and there\nshall be riders ahead and mounted cavalry behind, the conquerors of\nheaven on white horses. Clear the way! A thousand trumpets blare.\n\"Behold! the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him.\"\n\nThen the charioteers shall rein in their bounding steeds of fire, and\nthe King shall dismount from the chariot, and He shall take by the\nhand the bride of the wilderness, all the crowded galleries of the\nuniverse, the spectators. Ring all the wedding bells of heaven. The\nKing lifts the bride into the chariot and cries, \"Drive on! drive up!\"\nand the clouds shall spread their cloth of gold for the procession,\nand the twain shall go through the gates triumphant, and up the\nstreets, and then step into the palace at the banquet, where ten\nthousand potentates and principalities and dominations, cherubic and\narchangelic, with ten thousand gleaming and uplifted chalices, shall\ncelebrate the day when the King of Heaven and earth brings home His\nbride from the wilderness. Make haste, my beloved. Be thou like to a\nroe, or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.\n\n\n\n\nMATRIMONIAL DISCORDS.\n\n    \"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?\"--AMOS 3:3.\n\n\nA church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within\na world, is spelled by four letters--Home! If things go right there,\nthey go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong\neverywhere. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the foundation of\nChurch and State. A man never gets higher than his own garret or lower\nthan his own cellar. In other words, domestic life overarches and\nundergirds all other life. The highest House of Congress is the\ndomestic circle; the rocking-chair in the nursery is higher than a\nthrone. George Washington commanded the forces of the United States,\nbut Mary Washington commanded George. Chrysostom's mother made his pen\nfor him. If a man should start out and run seventy years in a straight\nline he could not get out from under the shadow of his own\nmantelpiece. I therefore talk to you this morning about a matter of\ninfinite and eternal moment when I speak of your home.\n\n\nTHE SOCIAL BALANCE.\n\nAs individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then\nhe gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you\nlack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the\ncog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience,\nanother has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the\nenthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or\nmade up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,\nthe human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It\nis in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that\nradical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater,\ntaffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the\nopposites.\n\nI have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a\ndriving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the\ncentre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives\nto Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them\nwith a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are\nnot satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The\nwater-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and\nthe hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and\nthe welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that\nGod has put us, or intended we should occupy.\n\n\nA RELIC OF EDEN.\n\nFor more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in\nstill smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same\nvarieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in\ntemperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the\nhusband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister\nbe sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and\nMartha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be\nno Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.\nThe home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;\nthe bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his\nhand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot\nforth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron\nbeaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come\nwhirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but\nthere is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River\nHiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does\nnot, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an\naddition of ribs.\n\n\nTHE HOME ASSAULTED.\n\nThis institution of marriage has been defamed in our day, and\ninfluences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem\nor a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively\nsilent, novels--their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness--are\ntrying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation\nin regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and\neternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! It\nis a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or\nhell. Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands! Alas for the\nmingling of the nightshade with the marriage garlands! Alas for the\nvenom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas for the white frosts of\neternal death that kill the orange blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus\nChrist is to assert what is right and to assert what is wrong.\n\n\nTHE ASSAULT OF THE SORDID.\n\nAttempt has been made to take the marriage institution, which was\nintended for the happiness and elevation of the race, and make it a\nmere commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and lands and\nequipage; a business partnership of two, stuffed up with the stories\nof romance and knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and feminine\nangelhood. The two after a while have roused up to find that, instead\nof the paradise they dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van\nAmburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild-cats. Twenty thousand\ndivorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst revolution that\nFrance ever saw. It was only the first course in that banquet of hell;\nand I tell you what you know as well as I do, that wrong notions on\nthe subject of Christian marriage are the cause at this day of more\nmoral outrage before God and man than any other cause.\n\nThere are some things that I want to bring before you. I know there\nare those of you who have had homes set up for a great many years; and\nthen there are those here who have just established their home. They\nhave only been in it a few months or a few years. Then there are those\nwho will, after awhile, set up for themselves a home, and it is right\nthat I should speak out upon these themes.\n\n\nTHE BENEFICENT GUEST.\n\nMy first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new home, if it be a\nnew home, and let Him who was a guest at Bethany be in your\nhousehold; let the divine blessing drop upon your every hope and plan\nand expectation. Those young people who begin with God end with\nheaven. Have on your right hand the engagement ring of the divine\naffection. If one of you be a Christian, let that one take a Bible and\nread a few verses in the evening-time, and then kneel down and commend\nyourselves to Him who setteth the solitary in families. I want to tell\nyou that the destroying angel passes by without touching or entering\nthe door-post sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant.\nWhy is it that in some families they never get along, and in others\nthey always get along well? I have watched such cases, and have come\nto a conclusion. In the first instance, nothing seemed to go\npleasantly, and after awhile came devastation, domestic disaster or\nestrangement. Why? They started wrong! In the other case, although\nthere were hardships and trials, and some things that had to be\nexplained, still things went on pleasantly until the very last. Why?\nThey started right!\n\n\nFORBEARANCE NEEDED.\n\nMy advice to you in your home is to exercise to the very last\npossibility of your nature the law of forbearance. Prayers in the\nhousehold will not make up for everything. Some of the best people in\nthe world are the hardest to get along with. There are people who\nstand up in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are\nuncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you\nwant it. Sometimes it will be the duty of the husband, and sometimes\nof the wife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on your rights,\nand you will have a Waterloo with no Blucher coming up at nightfall to\ndecide the conflict.\n\n\nA GRANDFATHER'S APOLOGY.\n\nNever be ashamed to apologize when you have done wrong in domestic\naffairs. Let that be a law of your household. The best thing I ever\nheard of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this: that once, having\nunrighteously rebuked one of his children, he himself having lost his\npatience, and, perhaps, having been misinformed of the child's doings,\nfound out his mistake, and in the evening of the same day gathered all\nhis family together, and said: \"Now I have one explanation to make,\nand one thing to say. Thomas, this morning, I rebuked you very\nunfairly. I am very sorry for it. I rebuked you in the presence of the\nwhole family, and now I ask your forgiveness in their presence.\" It\nmust have taken some courage to do that. It was right, was it not?\nNever be ashamed to apologize for domestic inaccuracy. Find out the\npoints; what are the weak points, if I may call them so, of your\ncompanion, and then stand aloof from them.\n\nDo not carry the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the\nwife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband\nbe careful where he throws his slippers. If the husband come home from\nthe store with his patience all exhausted, do not let the wife\nunnecessarily cross his temper; but both stand up for your rights, and\nI will promise the everlasting sound of the war-whoop. Your life will\nbe spent in making up, and marriage will be to you an unmitigated\ncurse. Cowper said:\n\n    \"The kindest and the happiest pair\n    Will find occasion to forbear;\n    And something every day they live,\n    To pity, and perhaps forgive.\"\n\nI advise, also, that you make your chief pleasure circle around about\nthat home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband\nspend the most of his nights away from home, of choice, and not of\nnecessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the\ncashier. If the wife throw the cares of the household in the servant's\nlap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or theatre,\nshe may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that\nwould confound a French milliner, but they are orphans. Oh, it is sad\nwhen a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off\nto the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw\nthem to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but the jaws of New\nYork and Brooklyn dissipation are swallowing down more little children\nto-day than all the monsters that ever crawled upon the banks of the\nGanges!\n\n\nA GODLESS MOTHER'S GRIEF.\n\nI have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on the death of a child she\nhad neglected. It was not so much grief that she felt from the fact\nthat the child was dead as the fact that she had neglected it. She\nsaid: \"If I had only watched over and cared for the child, I know God\nwould not have taken it.\" The tears came not; it was a dry, blistering\ntempest--a scorching simoon of the desert. When she wrung her hands it\nseemed as if she would twist her fingers from their sockets; when she\nseized her hair it seemed as if she had, in wild terror, grasped a\ncoiling serpent with her right hand.\n\nNo tears! Comrades of the little one came in and wept over the coffin;\nneighbors came in, and the moment they saw the still face of the child\nthe shower broke. No tears for her. God gives tears as the summer rain\nto the parched soul; but in all the universe the driest and hottest,\nthe most scorching and consuming thing is a mother's heart if she has\nneglected her child, when once it is dead. God may forgive her, but\nshe will never forgive herself. The memory will sink the eyes deeper\ninto the sockets, and pinch the face, and whiten the hair, and eat up\nthe heart with vultures that will not be satisfied, forever plunging\ndeeper their iron beaks. Oh, you wanderers from your home, go back to\nyour duty! The brightest flowers in all the earth are those which grow\nin the garden of a Christian household, clambering over the porch of a\nChristian home.\n\n\nMATRIMONIAL CONGENIALITY.\n\nI advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James\nMackintosh, one of the most eminent and elegant men that ever lived,\nwhile standing at the very height of his eminence, said to a great\ncompany of scholars: \"My wife made me.\" The wife ought to be the\nadvising partner in every firm. She ought to be interested in all the\nlosses and gains of shop and store. She ought to have a right--she has\na right--to know everything. If a man goes into a business transaction\nthat he dare not tell his wife of, you may depend that he is on the\nway either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things which\nhe does not wish to trouble his wife with; but if he dare not tell\nher, he is on the road to discomfiture.\n\nOn the other hand, the husband ought to be sympathetic with the wife's\noccupation. It is no easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that could\nhave endured martyrdom as well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has\nactually been worn out by house management. There are a thousand\nmartyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexations of\nthe day, around the stove or the table, or in the nursery or parlor,\nto have your husband say: \"You know nothing about trouble; you ought\nto be in the store half an hour.\" Sympathy of occupation!\n\nIf the husband's work cover him with the soot of the furnace or the\nodors of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily\ndisgusted at the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your gains are one,\nyour interests are one, your losses are one; lay hold of the work of\nlife with both hands. Four hands to fight the battles; four eyes to\nwatch for the danger; four shoulders on which to carry the trials. It\nis a very sad thing when the painter has a wife who does not like\npictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when she has a husband\nwho does not like music.\n\n\nGENTEEL BUSINESS.\n\nIt is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited unless her husband\nhas what is called a \"genteel business.\" So far as I understand a\n\"genteel business,\" it is something to which a man goes at ten o'clock\nin the morning, and from which he comes home at two or three o'clock\nin the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for doing nothing.\nThat is, I believe, a \"genteel business;\" and there has been many a\nwife who has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the husband\nhas given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning of the\nbanisters, or the building of the walls, and put himself in circles\nwhere he has nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine, and get\nhimself into habits that upset him, going down in the maelstrom,\ntaking his wife and children with him.\n\nThere are a good many trains running from earth to destruction. They\nstart all the hours of the day, and all the hours of the night. There\nare the freight trains; they go very slowly and very heavily; and\nthere are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, and\nthey stop very often and let a man get out when he wants to. But\ngenteel idleness is an express train; Satan is the stoker, and Death\nis the engineer; and though one may come out in front of it and swing\nthe red flag of \"danger,\" or the lantern of God's Word, it makes just\none shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout and a\nwail and a shriek--crash, crash! There are two classes of people sure\nof destruction: First, those who have nothing to do; secondly, those\nwho have something to do, but are too lazy or too proud to do it.\n\n\nLOVE TO PRESIDE.\n\nI have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a happy\nhome, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the\ndomestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress\nyou give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you\noccupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone. When the\nhusband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness\nof voice, by strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of\ndomestic bliss has become a despotism that neither God nor man will\nabide. Oh, ye who promised to love each other at the altar, how dare\nyou commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on your affection.\nIt is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it live again. The\nblast from hell that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness\nof darkness forever.\n\n\nA HOUSE NOT A HOME.\n\nHere are a man and wife; they agree in nothing else, but they agree\nthey will have a home. They will have a splendid house, and they think\nthat if they have a house they will have a home. Architects make the\nplan, and the mechanics execute it; the house to cost one hundred\nthousand dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread, lights are\nhoisted, curtains are hung, cards of invitation sent out. The horses\nin gold-plated harness prance at the gate; guests come in and take\ntheir places; the flute sounds; the dancers go up and down; and with\none grand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the mirth of the great\ntown wheel amidst the pictured walls.\n\nHa! this is happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the\nmusic; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow of sculpture; sound\nit up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness,\nindeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to\nHappiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers\nand pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and let it be\na throne; and then let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and we\nwill stand around and, all chalices lifted, we will say: \"Drink, O\nQueen! live forever!\"\n\n\nLIGHTS OUT.\n\nBut the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of\nthe impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the\nhousehold come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amid\nthe parlor floor. But, alas! as they come back the flowers have faded,\nthe sweet odors have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead\nof the Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish,\nwith bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her hair.\n\nThe romp and joyous step of the dancers who have left seems rumbling\nyet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses\nof the feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into\nblood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors\ncatch tangled in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of\nwind comes through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber,\nin which all the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers\ncome the words: \"Happiness is not in us!\" And the arches respond: \"It\nis not in us!\" And the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by\ninvisible fingers, answer: \"Happiness is not in us!\" And the frozen\nlips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the throne of wilted\nflowers, she strikes her bony hands together, and groans: \"It is not\nin me!\"\n\n\nHAPPINESS IN POVERTY.\n\nThat very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a\nyear--only one thousand--goes to his home, set up three months ago,\njust after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the door; love sits\nwith him at the table; love talks over the work of the day; love takes\ndown the Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and they\nkneel, and while they are kneeling--right in that plain room, on that\nplain carpet--the angels of God build a throne, not out of flowers\nthat perish and fade away, but out of garlands of heaven, wreath on\ntop of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then\nthe harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one who mounted\nthe throne, with eye so bright and brow so fair that the twain knew it\nwas Christian Love. And they knelt at the throne, and, putting one\nhand on each head, she blessed them, and said: \"Happiness is with me!\"\nAnd that throne of celestial bloom withered not with the passing\nyears; and the queen left not the throne till one day the married pair\nfelt stricken in years--felt themselves called away, and knew not\nwhich way to go, and the queen bounded from the throne, and said:\n\"Follow me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of everlasting\nlove.\" And so they went up to sing songs of love, and walk on\npavements of love, and to live together in mansions of love, and to\nrejoice forever in the truth that God is love.\n\n\n\n\nHOTELS VERSUS HOMES.\n\n    \"And brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the\n    morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to\n    the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever\n    thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.\"--LUKE\n    10:34, 35.\n\n\nThis is the good Samaritan paying the hotel bill of a man who had been\nrobbed and almost killed by bandits. The good Samaritan had found the\nunfortunate on a lonely, rocky road, where, to this very day,\ndepredations are sometimes committed upon travelers, and had put the\ninjured man into the saddle, while this merciful and well-to-do man\nhad walked till they got to the hotel, and the wounded man was put to\nbed and cared for. It must have been a very superior hotel in its\naccommodations, for, though in the country, the landlord was paid at\nthe rate of what in our country would be four or five dollars a day, a\npenny being then a day's wages, and the two pennies paid in this case\nabout two days' wages. Moreover, it was one of those kind-hearted\nlandlords who are wrapped up in the happiness of their guests, because\nthe good Samaritan leaves the poor wounded fellow to his entire care,\npromising that when he came that way again he would pay all the bills\nuntil the invalid got well.\n\n\nTHE VALUE OF HOTELS.\n\nHotels and boarding-houses are necessities. In very ancient times they\nwere unknown, because the world had comparatively few inhabitants, who\nwere not much given to travel, and private hospitality met all the\nwants of sojourners, as when Abraham rushed out at Mamre to invite the\nthree men to sit down to a dinner of veal; as when the people were\npositively commanded to be given to hospitality; as in many of the\nplaces in the East these ancient customs are practiced to-day. But we\nhave now hotels presided over by good landlords, and boarding-houses\npresided over by excellent host or hostess, in all neighborhoods,\nvillages and cities, and it is our congratulation that those of our\nland surpass all other lands. They rightly become the permanent\nresidences of many people, such as those who are without families,\nsuch as those whose business keeps them migratory, such as those who\nought not, for various reasons of health or peculiarity of\ncircumstances, take upon themselves the cares of housekeeping.\n\n\nQUEENLY CATERERS.\n\nMany a man falling sick in one of these boarding-houses or hotels has\nbeen kindly watched and nursed; and by the memory of her own\nsufferings and losses the lady at the head of such a house has done\nall that a mother could do for a sick child, and the slumberless eye\nof God sees and appreciates her sacrifices in behalf of the stranger.\nAmong the most marvelous cases of patience and Christian fidelity are\nmany of those who keep boarding-houses, enduring without resentment\nthe unreasonable demands of their guests for expensive food and\nattentions for which they are not willing to pay an equivalent--a lot\nof cranky men and women who are not worthy to tie the shoe of their\nqueenly caterer. The outrageous way in which boarders sometimes act to\ntheir landlords and landladies show that these critical guests had bad\nearly rearing, and that in the making-up of their natures all that\nconstitutes the gentleman and lady were left out. Some of the most\nprincely men and some of the most elegant women that I know of to-day\nkeep hotels and boarding-houses.\n\nBut one of the great evils of this day is found in the fact that a\nlarge population of our towns and cities are giving up and have given\nup their homes and taken apartments, that they may have more freedom\nfrom domestic duties and more time for social life, and because they\nlike the whirl of publicity better than the quiet and privacy of a\nresidence they can call their own. The lawful use of these hotels and\nboarding-houses is for most people while they are in transitu: but as\na terminus they are in many cases demoralization, utter and complete.\nThat is the point at which families innumerable have begun to\ndisintegrate. There never has been a time when so many families,\nhealthy and abundantly able to support and direct homes of their own,\nhave struck tent and taken permanent abode in these public\nestablishments. It is an evil wide as Christendom, and by voice and\nthrough the newspaper press I utter warning and burning protest, and\nask Almighty God to bless the word, whether in the hearing or reading.\n\n\nPROMOTERS OF GOSSIP.\n\nIn these public caravanseries the demon of gossip is apt to get full\nsway. All the boarders run daily the gauntlet of general\ninspection--how they look when they come down in the morning and when\nthey get in at night, and what they do for a living, and whom they\nreceive as guests in their rooms, and what they wear, and what they do\nnot wear, and how they eat, and what they eat, and how much they eat,\nand how little they eat. If a man proposes in such a place to be\nisolated and reticent and alone, they will begin to guess about him:\nWho is he? Where did he come from? How long is he going to stay? Has\nhe paid his board? How much does he pay? Perhaps he has committed some\ncrime and does not want it to be known; there must be something wrong\nabout him, or he would speak.\n\nThe whole house goes into the detective business. They must find out\nabout him. They must find out about him right away. If he leave his\ndoor unlocked by accident he will find that his rooms have been\ninspected, his trunk explored, his letters folded differently from the\nway they were folded when he put them away. Who is he? is the\nquestion, asked with intenser interest, until the subject has become a\nmonomania. The simple fact is, that he is nobody in particular, but\nminds his own business. The best landlords and landladies cannot\nsometimes hinder their places from becoming\n\n\nA PANDEMONIUM\n\nof whisperers, and reputations are torn to tatters, and evil\nsuspicions are aroused, and scandals started, and the parliament of\nthe family is blown to atoms by some Guy Fawkes who was not caught in\ntime, as was his English predecessor of gunpowdery reputation.\n\nThe reason is that while in private homes families have so much to\nkeep them busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences\nthere are so many who have nothing to do, and that always makes\nmischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in\nconsultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they\ngot to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get\nout of breath before reaching there, and not feel in full glow of\nanimosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at\nall. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 are on the same corridor, and\nwhen one carrion crow goes \"Caw! Caw!\" all the other crows hear it and\nflock together over the same carcass. \"Oh, I have heard something\nrich! Sit down and let me tell you all about it.\" And the first guffaw\nincreases the gathering, and it has to be told all over again, and as\nthey separate each carries a spark from the altar of Gab to some other\ncircle, until from the coal-heaver in the cellar to the maid in the\ntop room of the garret all are aware of the defamation, and that\nevening all who leave the house will bear it to other houses, until\nautumnal fires sweeping across Illinois prairies are less raging and\nswift than that flame of consuming reputation blazing across the\nvillage or city.\n\nThose of us who were brought up in the country know that the\nold-fashioned hatching of eggs in the hay-mow required four or five\nweeks of brooding, but there are new modes of hatching by machinery,\nwhich take less time and do the work in wholesale. So, while the\nprivate home may brood into life an occasional falsity, and take a\nlong time to do it, many of the boarding-houses and family hotels\nafford a swifter and more multitudinous style of moral incubation, and\none old gossip will get off the nest after one hour's brooding,\nclucking a flock of thirty lies after her, each one picking up its\nlittle worm of juicy regalement. It is no advantage to hear too much\nabout your neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking\ncare of their faults that you will have no time to look after your\nown. And while you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden yours\nwill get all overgrown with horse-sorrel and mullen stalks.\n\n\nA WRONG TO CHILDREN.\n\nOne of the worst damages that comes from the herding of so many people\ninto boarding-houses and family hotels is inflicted upon children. It\nis only another way of bringing them up on the commons. While you have\nyour own private house you can, for the most part, control their\ncompanionship and their whereabouts; but by twelve years of age in\nthese public resorts they will have picked up all the bad things that\ncan be furnished by the prurient minds of dozens of people. They will\noverhear blasphemies, and see quarrels, and get precocious in sin,\nand what the bartender does not tell them the porter or hostler or\nbell-boy will.\n\nBeside that, the children will go out into this world without the\nrestraining, anchoring, steadying and all-controlling memory of a\nhome. From that none of us who have been blessed of such memory have\nescaped. It grips a man for eighty years, if he lives so long. It\npulls him back from doors into which he otherwise would enter. It\nsmites him with contrition in the very midst of his dissipations. As\nthe fish already surrounded by\n\n\nTHE LONG WIDE NET\n\nswim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as they please, and with\ngay toss of silvery scale they defy the sportsman on the beach, and\nafter a while the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over hand,\nand hand over hand, and it is a long while before the captured fins\nbegin to feel the net, and then they dart this way and that, hoping to\nget out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up\nto the very feet of the captors, so the memory of an early home\nsometimes seems to relax and let men out further and further from God\nand further and further from shore--five years, ten years, twenty\nyears, thirty years; but some day they find an irresistible mesh\ndrawing them back, and they are compelled to retreat from their\nprodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to\nescape the impression, and try to dive deeper down in sin, after a\nwhile are brought clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.\n\nIf it be possible, O father and mother! let your sons and daughters go\nout into the world under the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure\nhome. About your two or three rooms in a boarding-house or a family\nhotel you can cast no such glorious sanctity. They will think of these\npublic caravanseries as an early stopping place, malodorous with old\nvictuals, coffees perpetually steaming, and meats in everlasting stew\nor broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along\nwhich drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning,\nrapping at the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do not be\nguilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.\n\n\nWHAT A HOME IS.\n\nA home is four walls enclosing one family with identity of interest,\nand a privacy from outside inspection so complete that it is a world\nin itself, no one entering except by permission--bolted and barred and\nchained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used\nin law books and legal circles is mightily suggestive--every man's\nhouse is his castle. As much so as though it had drawbridge,\nportcullis, redoubt, bastion and armed turret. Even the officer of the\nlaw may not enter to serve a writ, except the door be voluntarily\nopened unto him; burglary, or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive\nthat the law clashes its iron jaws on any one who attempts it. Unless\nit be necessary to stay for longer or shorter time in family hotel or\nboarding-house--and there are thousands of instances in which it is\nnecessary, as I showed you at the beginning--unless in this\nexceptional case, let neither wife nor husband consent to such\npermanent residence.\n\n\nHAZARDOUS TO MORALS.\n\nThe probability is that the wife will have to divide her husband's\ntime with public smoking or reading room, or with some coquettish\nspider in search of unwary flies; and if you do not entirely lose your\nhusband it will be because he is divinely protected from the disasters\nthat have whelmed thousands of husbands with as good intentions as\nyours. Neither should the husband, without imperative reason, consent\nto such a life unless he is sure his wife can withstand the temptation\nof social dissipation which sweeps across such places with the force\nof the Atlantic Ocean when driven by a September equinox. Many wives\ngive up their homes for these public residences so that they may give\ntheir entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees,\nand they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and\nround and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise and shoots\noff into a tangent. But the difference is, in one case it is a top and\nin the other a soul.\n\n\nTHE LARES AND PENATES.\n\nBeside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around\nthe private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while\nthe denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: \"What is\nthe use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them.\"\nMementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge,\nupholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home\nare discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to\narrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic\nhappiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments\nof a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can\ncall your own, and are associated with the different members of your\nhousehold, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic\nhistory. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have\nbeen gathering until every figure in the carpet, and every panel of\nthe door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its\nown, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or\ndaughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it\nbecomes when one can say: \"In that room such a one was born; in that\nbed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a\none had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt\nfor her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came\nback from a sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was mother's\nrocking chair.\" What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!\n\n\nHOSPITALITY CURTAILED.\n\nThe public residence of hotel and boarding-house abolishes the grace\nof hospitality. Your guest does not want to come to such a table. No\none wants to run such a gauntlet of acute and merciless\nhyper-criticism. Unless you have a home of your own you will not be\nable to exercise the best rewarded of all the graces. For exercise of\nthis grace what blessing came to the Shunamite in the restoration of\nher son to life because she entertained Elisha, and to the widow of\nZarephath in the perpetual oil well of the miraculous cruise because\nshe fed a hungry prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her life\nat the demolition of Jericho because she entertained the spies and to\nLaban in the formation of an interesting family relation because of\nhis entertainment of Jacob, and to Lot in his rescue from the\ndestroyed city because of his entertainment of the angels, and to Mary\nand Martha and Zaccheus in spiritual blessing because they entertained\nChrist, and to Publius in the island of Melita in the healing of his\nfather because of the entertainment of Paul drenched from the\nshipwreck, and of innumerable houses throughout Christendom upon which\nhave come blessings from generation to generation because their doors\nswung easily open in the enlarging, ennobling, irradiating, and divine\ngrace of hospitality. I do not know what your experience has been, but\nI have had men and women visiting at my house who left a benediction\non every room--in the blessing they asked at the table, in the prayer\nthey offered at the family altar, in the good advice they gave the\nchildren, in the gospelization that looked out from every lineament of\ntheir countenances; and their departure was the sword of bereavement.\n\nThe Queen of Norway, Sweden and Denmark had a royal\n\n\nCUP OF TEN CURVES,\n\nor lips, each one having on it the name of the distinguished person\nwho had drank from it. And that cup which we offer to others in\nChristian hospitality, though it be of the plainest earthenware, is a\nroyal cup, and God can read on all its sides the names of those who\nhave taken from it refreshment. But all this is impossible unless you\nhave a home of your own. It is the delusion as to what is necessary\nfor a home that hinders so many from establishing one. Thirty rooms\nare not necessary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor five, nor\nthree. In the right way plant a table, and couch, and knife and fork,\nand a cup, and a chair, and you can raise a young paradise. Just start\na home, on however small a scale, and it will grow. When King Cyrus\nwas invited to dine with an humble friend the king made the one\ncondition of his coming that the only dish be one loaf of bread, and\nthe most imperial satisfactions have sometimes banqueted on the\nplainest fare.\n\nDo not be caught in the delusion of many thousands in postponing a\nhome until they can have an expensive one. That idea is the devil's\ntrap that catches men and women innumerable who will never have any\nhome at all. Capitalists of America, build plain homes for the people.\nLet this tenement-house system, in which hundreds of thousands of the\npeople of our cities are wallowing in the mire, be broken up by small\nhomes, where people can have their own firesides and their own altar.\nIn this great continent there is room enough for every man and woman\nto have a home. Morals and civilization and religion demand it.\n\n\nSMALL HOMES NEEDED\n\nWe want done all over this land what George Peabody and Lady\nBurdett-Coutts did in England, and some of the large manufacturers of\nthis country have done for the villages and cities, in building small\nhouses at cheap rents, so that the middle classes can have separate\nhomes. They are the only class not provided for. The rich have their\npalaces, and the poor have their poorhouses, and criminals have their\njails; but what about the honest middle classes, who are able and\nwilling to work, and yet have small income? Let the capitalists,\ninspired of God and pure patriotism, rise and build whole streets of\nsmall residences. The laborer may have, at the close of the day, to\nwalk or ride further than is desirable to reach it, but when he gets\nto his destination in the eventide he will find something worthy of\nbeing called by that glorious and impassioned and heaven-descended\nword, \"home.\"\n\n\nSOMETHING TO SAVE FOR.\n\nYoung married man, as soon as you can buy such a place, even if you\nhave to put on it a mortgage reaching from base to cap-stone. The\nmuch abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent\nand provident is the beginning of a competency and a fortune, for the\nreason he will not be satisfied until he has paid it off, and all the\nhousehold are put on stringent economies until then. Deny yourself all\nsuperfluities and all luxuries until you can say: \"Everything in this\nhouse is mine, thank God!--every timber, every brick, every foot of\nplumbing, every door-sill.\" Do not have your children born in a\nboarding-house, and do not yourself be buried from one. Have a place\nwhere your children can shout and sing and romp without being\noverhauled for the racket. Have a kitchen where you can do something\ntoward the reformation of evil cookery and the lessening of this\nnation of dyspeptics. As Napoleon lost one of his great battles by an\nattack of indigestion, so many men have such\n\n\nA DAILY WRESTLE\n\nwith the food swallowed that they have no strength left for the battle\nof life; and though your wife may know how to play on all musical\ninstruments, and rival a prima donna, she is not well educated unless\nshe can boil an Irish potato and broil a mutton-chop, since the diet\nsometimes decides the fate of families and nations.\n\nHave a sitting-room with at least one easy chair, even though you have\nto take turns at sitting in it, and books out of the public library or\nof your own purchase for the making of your family intelligent, and\ncheckerboards and guessing matches, with an occasional blind man's\nbuff, which is of all games my favorite. Rouse up your home with all\nstyles of innocent mirth, and gather up in your children's nature a\nreservoir of exuberance that will pour down refreshing streams when\nlife gets parched, and the dark days come, and the lights go out, and\nthe laughter is smothered into a sob.\n\n\nCHRIST IN THE HOME.\n\nFirst, last and all the time, have Christ in your home. Julius Caesar\ncalmed the fears of an affrighted boatman who was rowing him in a\nstream by stating: \"So long as Caesar is with you in the same boat no\nharm can happen.\" And whatever storm of adversity or bereavement or\npoverty may strike your home all is well as long as you have Christ\nthe King on board. Make your home so far-reaching in its influence\nthat down to the last moment of your children's life you may hold them\nwith a heavenly charm. At seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of\nthe American Senate lay dying at Washington--I mean Henry Clay, of\nKentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside and the \"old man eloquent,\"\nafter a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and\ncis-Atlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept\nsaying in his dream over and over again: \"My mother! mother! mother!\"\nMay the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy,\nand so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven, in\nwhich place may we all meet--father, mother, son, daughter, brother,\nsister, grandfather and grandmother, and grandchild, and the entire\ngroup of precious ones, of whom we must say in the words of\ntransporting Charles Wesley:\n\n    \"One family we dwell in Him,\n      One church above, beneath;\n    Though now divided by the stream--\n      The narrow stream of death;\n    One army of the living God,\n      To His command we bow;\n    Part of the host have crossed the flood,\n      And part are crossing now.\"\n\n\n\n\nEASY DIVORCE.\n\n    \"What therefore God hath joined together let not man put\n    asunder.\"--MATTHEW 19:6\n\n\nThat there are hundreds and thousands of infelicitous homes in America\nno one will doubt. If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that\nmight be locked up and abandoned; but in many a home there is a\nskeleton in the hallway and a skeleton in all the apartments.\n\n\n\"UNHAPPILY MARRIED\"\n\nare two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox\nminister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a hell; they are\nthere now. Sometimes a grand and gracious woman will be thus\nincarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with\nMrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a\nconsecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or\nunited to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both\nparties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and\nhis wife smokes and swears, and Froude, the historian, is mean enough,\nbecause of the shekels he gets for the manuscript,[3] to pull aside\nthe curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Five,\nCheyne Row. Some say that for\n\n\nTHE ALLEVIATION\n\nof all these domestic disorders of which we hear, easy divorce is a\ngood prescription. God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as He\nauthorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully\ndivorced as I have for one lawfully married. But you know and I know\nthat wholesale divorce is one of\n\n\nOUR NATIONAL SCOURGES.\n\nI am not surprised at this when I think of the influences which have\nbeen abroad militating against the marriage relation.\n\nFor many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about a\nfree-love millennium. There were meetings of this kind held in the\nAcademy of Music, Brooklyn, Cooper Institute, New York, Tremont\nTemple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most\nprominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great\npromiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the\ntyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women's\nrights, and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short\ncurls and short dress and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with\nGod because they were created women; while on the platform sat meek\nmen with soft accent and cowed demeanor, apologetic for masculinity,\nand holding the parasols while the termagant orators went on preaching\nthe gospel of free love.\n\nThat campaign of about twenty years set more devils in the marriage\nrelation than will be exorcised in the next fifty. Men and women went\nhome from such meetings so permanently confused as to who were their\nwives and husbands that they never got out of the perplexity, and the\ncriminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of woes,\nand this one got alimony, and that one got a limited divorce, and this\nmother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes\ncome and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went\ninto an insane asylum, and those went into dissolute public life, and\nall went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the\nmarriage institution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one\nname and sometimes under another.\n\nAnother influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been\n\n\nPOLYGAMY IN UTAH.\n\nThat is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has\npoisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an\narm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be\nsickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of\nthe nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of\nAmerica, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress\nforbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where\nthey had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five\nadministrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an\narmy at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked\nfrom that fortress of libertinism.\n\nEvery new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the\nstraw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in\nproposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and\nin other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen,\nand more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any\ntime in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did\nmore for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent\nadministrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and\nalthough it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than\nthe subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk,\ntalk, talk.\n\nI want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have\nhad a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are\ncrying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already\nwith which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it\nsmoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation\nthroughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of\niniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north,\nsouth, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.\n\nAnother influence that has warred against the marriage relation in\nthis country has been a\n\n\nPUSTULOUS LITERATURE,\n\nwith its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic\nwrongs, and infidelities, and massacres, and outrages, until it is a\nwonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on\nthe subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and\nNew York and all our cities reeking with the filth.\n\n\"Now,\" say some, \"we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear\nthem out or correct them is by easy divorce.\" Well, before we yield to\nthat cry, let us find out\n\n\nHOW EASY IT IS NOW.\n\nI have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while\nin some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy.\nThe State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of\nproper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts\nthe right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it\nexpedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that\nin one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833\ndivorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look\nover the records of the States. In Massachusetts 600 divorces in one\nyear; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces in one\nyear; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New\nEngland in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England\n20,000. Is that not easy enough?\n\nIf the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and\nmultiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our\ncourts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you\nwill have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in\nthe middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a\nwoman will be that her husband's overcoat was buttonless. Causes of\ndivorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England,\nand doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have\nto tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces\nto marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to\nthirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?\n\nI want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with\nthe dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one\ncase of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the\nreign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know\nhow rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the\nReign of Terror was introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce\nin one year in Paris.\n\n\nWHAT WE WANT\n\nin this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more\nand more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will\nbe persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except\nthrough the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge\nof that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and\nthat it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more\nmarriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with\nthe idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can\nget out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken\nout of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more\njoking about the blossoms in a bride's hair than about the cypress on\na coffin.\n\nWhat we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present\nsession move for the changing the national Constitution so that a law\ncan be passed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what\nshall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what\nis wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.\n\n\nHOW IS IT NOW?\n\nIf a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only\nnecessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the\ndomestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party\nknows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody,\non April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of\nthe household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a\nbusiness excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride's house. No cards.\nThere are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the\ndisintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States,\nlike our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making\nmarriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.\n\nThe Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session\nfor a change of the National Constitution, and then to appoint a\ncommittee--not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and\ntheir families in Washington--who shall prepare a good, honest,\nrighteous, comprehensive,\n\n\nUNIFORM LAW\n\nthat will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will\nput an end to brokerages in marriage. That will send divorce lawyers\ninto a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years\non the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning\nhow they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable\ncircumstances.\n\nMore difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon\nmarriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the\nrelation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The\nfemale to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly\nunattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody\nknows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through\nthe commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how\nmuch estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out\nhow long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can\nstand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the\nrelation; for he says, \"If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce\nlaw I'll back out.\" That process is going on all the time, and men\nenter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection,\nand it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that\ntranspired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and\nLackawanna.\n\nNow, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he\ngoes into that relation there is no possibility of his getting out,\nor no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.\nHe should say to himself, \"Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a\nwhole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of\nsunshine and gardens of peace.\"\n\nRigorous divorce law will also hinder women from\n\n\nTHE FATAL MISTAKE\n\nof marrying men to reform them. If a young man by twenty-five years of\nage or thirty years of age has the habit of strong drink fixed on him,\nhe is as certainly bound for a drunkard's grave as that a train\nstarting out from Grand Central Depot at 8 o'clock to-morrow morning\nis bound for Albany. The train may not reach Albany, for it may be\nthrown from the track. The young man may not reach a drunkard's grave,\nfor something may throw him off the iron track of evil habit; but the\nprobability is that the train that starts to-morrow morning at 8\no'clock for Albany will get there and the probability is that the\nyoung man who has the habit of strong drink fixed on him before\ntwenty-five or thirty years of age will arrive at a drunkard's grave.\nShe knows he drinks, although he tries to hide it by chewing cloves.\nEverybody knows he drinks. Parents warn, neighbors and friends warn.\nShe will marry him, she will reform him.\n\nIf she is unsuccessful in the experiment, why then the divorce law\nwill emancipate her, because habitual drunkenness is a cause for\ndivorce in Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, and nearly all the\nStates. So the poor thing goes to the altar of sacrifice. If you will\nshow me the poverty-struck streets in any city I will show you the\nhomes of the women who married men to reform them. In one case out of\nten thousand it may be a successful experiment. I never saw the\nsuccessful experiment. But have a rigorous divorce law, and that woman\nwill say, \"If I am affianced to that man it is for life; and if now in\nthe ardor of his young love, and I am the prize to be won, he will not\ngive up his cups, when he has won the prize, surely he will not give\nup his cups.\" And so that woman will say to the man, \"No, sir, you are\nalready married to the club, and you are married to that evil habit,\nand so you are married twice, and you are a bigamist. Go!\"\n\nA rigorous divorce law will also do much to hinder hasty and\n\n\nINCONSIDERATE MARRIAGES.\n\nUnder the impression that one can be easily released people enter the\nrelation without inquiry and without reflection. Romance and impulse\nrule the day. Perhaps the only ground for the marriage compact is that\nshe likes his looks and he admires the graceful way she passes around\nthe ice cream at the picnic! It is all they know about each other. It\nis all the preparation for life. A man not able to pay his own board\nbill, with not a dollar in his possession, will stand at the altar and\ntake the loving hand, and say, \"With all my worldly goods I thee\nendow!\" A woman that could not make a loaf of bread to save her life\nwill swear to cherish and obey. A Christian will marry an atheist, and\nthat always makes conjoined wretchedness; for if a man does not\nbelieve there is a God, he is neither to be trusted with a dollar nor\nwith your lifelong happiness.\n\nHaving read much about love in a cottage people brought up in ease\nwill go and starve in a hovel. Runaway matches and elopements, 999 out\nof 1000 of which mean death and hell, multiplying on all hands. You\nsee them in every day's newspapers. Our ministers in this region have\nno defence such as they have in other cities where the banns must be\npreviously published and an officer of the law must give a certificate\nthat all is right; so clergymen are left defenceless, and unite those\nwho ought never to be united. Perhaps they are too young or perhaps\nthey are standing already in some domestic compact.\n\nBy the wreck of ten thousand homes, by the holocaust of ten thousand\nsacrificed men and women, by the hearthstone of the family which is\nthe corner-stone of the State, and in the name of that God who hath\nset up the family institution and who hath made the breaking of the\nmarital oath the most appalling of all perjuries, I implore the\nCongress of the United States to make some righteous, uniform law for\nall the States and from ocean to ocean, on this subject of marriage\nand divorce.\n\n\nADVICE TO LOVERS.\n\nLet me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning,\nbefore you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution;\ninquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the\ntaste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take\nthe heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put\nyour lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation\nfor being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who\ndresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God\nwrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more\ncelebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that\nAbsalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.\nHear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has\nbeen or ever will be, is good character.\n\n\nASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL\n\nin this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They\nare the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you\nthan any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your\nhappiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,\n\n\nASK GOD.\n\nI used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about\nto offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong\ncompanion, he opened the conversation by saying, \"Let us pray.\" But I\nhave seen so many shipwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up\nmy mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in\nprayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and\npoverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all\nthe path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with\nits wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last\nfarewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam\nand Eve, parted.\n\nAnd let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or\nwoman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to\nthe Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through\ndifference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your\nmind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear,\nremembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who\nhave been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and\nimmediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green grass on\nquiet graves. And perhaps, my brother, my sister, perhaps you may\nappreciate each other better in heaven than you have appreciated each\nother on earth.\n\nIn the \"Farm Ballads\" our American poet puts into the lips of a\nrepentant husband after a life of married perturbation these\nsuggestive words:\n\n    \"And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,\n    And lying together in silence, perhaps we will agree.\n    And if ever we meet in heaven, I would not think it queer\n    If we love each other better because we quarrelled here.\"\n\nAnd let me say to those of you who are in happy married union,\n\n\nAVOID FIRST QUARRELS;\n\nhave no unexplained correspondence with former admirers; cultivate no\nsuspicions; in a moment of bad temper do not rush out and tell the\nneighbors; do not let any of those gad-abouts of society unload in\nyour house their baggage of gab and tittle-tattle; do not stand on\nyour rights; learn how to apologize; do not be so proud, or so\nstubborn, or so devilish that you will not make up. Remember that the\nworst domestic misfortunes and most scandalous divorce cases started\nfrom little infelicities. The whole piled-up train of ten rail cars\ntelescoped and smashed at the foot of an embankment one hundred feet\ndown came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the\ntrack. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest\nresounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings\nthat were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability,\nand religion, and immortal soul went down in the crash, crash!\n\nAnd, fellow-citizens as well as fellow-Christians, let us have a\ndivine rage against anything that wars on the marriage state. Blessed\ninstitution! Instead of two arms to fight the battle of life, four.\nInstead of two eyes to scrutinize the path of life, four. Instead of\ntwo shoulders to lift the burden of life, four. Twice the energy,\ntwice the courage, twice the holy ambition, twice the probability of\nworldly success, twice the prospects of heaven. Into that matrimonial\nbower God fetches two souls. Outside the bower room for all\ncontentions, and all bickerings, and all controversies, but inside\nthat bower there is room for only one guest--the angel of love. Let\nthat angel stand at the floral doorway of this Edenic bower with drawn\nsword to hew down the worst foe of that bower--easy divorce. And for\nevery Paradise lost may there be a Paradise regained. And after we\nquit our home here may we have a brighter home in heaven at the\nwindows of which this moment are familiar faces watching for our\narrival and wondering why so long we tarry.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[3] Dr. Talmage, in common with many critics, here censures Mr. James\nAnthony Froude for making the disclosures. It is, however, due to that\neminent historian to say that he gives a different explanation of his\nmotives than that suggested by Dr. Talmage of a regard for \"shekels.\" He\nstates that as Mr. Carlyle had selected him as his biographer and given\nthe materials for the work into his hands, he conceived that his duty as\na conscientious man was to tell the whole truth. He did it also as a\nmatter of policy as well as of principle. Had he kept back any part, it\nwould have been told with less accuracy by others who knew some of the\nfacts but not all of them.--ED.\n\n\n\n\nMATERNITY.\n\n    \"Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to\n    him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to\n    offer the yearly sacrifice.\"--I SAMUEL 2:19.\n\n\nThe stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt to discourage a\nwoman's soul. She says within herself: \"It is impossible that I ever\ncan achieve any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean to try;\"\nas though a child should refuse to play the eight notes because he\ncannot execute a \"William Tell.\" This Hannah of the text differs from\nthe persons I just now named. She was an ordinary woman, with ordinary\nintellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circumstances, and yet,\nby extraordinary piety, standing out before all the ages to come.\n\n\nTHE MODEL CHRISTIAN MOTHER.\n\nHannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a person very much like\nherself--unromantic and plain, never having fought a battle or been\nthe subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them would have been\ncalled a genius. Just what you and I might be, that was Elkanah and\nHannah. The brightest time in all the history of that family was the\nbirth of Samuel. Although no star ran along the heavens pointing down\nto his birthplace, I think the angels of God stooped at the coming of\nso wonderful a prophet.\n\nAs Samuel had been given in answer to prayer, Elkanah and all his\nfamily, save Hannah, started up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices of\nthanksgiving. The cradle where the child slept was altar enough for\nHannah's grateful heart, but when the boy was old enough she took him\nto Shiloh and took three bullocks, and an ephah of flour, and a bottle\nof wine, and made offering of sacrifice unto the Lord, and there,\naccording to a previous vow, she left him; for there he was to stay\nall the days of his life, and minister in the tabernacle.\n\nYears rolled on, and every year Hannah made with her own hands a\ngarment for Samuel, and took it over to him. The lad would have got\nalong well without that garment, for I suppose he was well clad by the\nministry of the temple; but Hannah could not be contented unless she\nwas all the time doing something for her darling boy. \"Moreover his\nmother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to\nyear, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly\nsacrifice.\"\n\nI. Hannah stands before you, then, in the first place, as\n\n\nAN INDUSTRIOUS MOTHER.\n\nThere was no need for her to work. Elkanah, her husband, was far from\npoor. He belonged to a distinguished family; for the Bible tells us\nthat he was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the\nson of Zuph. \"Who were they?\" you say. I do not know; but they were\ndistinguished people, no doubt, or their names would not have been\nmentioned.\n\nHannah might have seated herself with her family, and, with folded\narms and dishevelled hair, read novels from year to year, if there had\nbeen any to read; but when I see her making that garment, and taking\nit over to Samuel, I know she is industrious from principle as well as\nfrom pleasure. God would not have a mother become a drudge or a slave;\nHe would have her employ all the helps possible in this day in the\nrearing of her children. But Hannah ought never to be ashamed to be\nfound making a coat for Samuel.\n\nMost mothers need no counsel in this direction. The wrinkles on their\nbrow, the pallor on their cheek, the thimble-mark on their finger,\nattest that they are faithful in their maternal duties. The bloom, and\nthe brightness, and the vivacity of girlhood have given place for the\ngrander dignity, and usefulness, and industry of motherhood. But there\nis\n\n\nA HEATHENISH IDEA\n\ngetting abroad in some of the families of Americans; there are mothers\nwho banish themselves from the home circle. For three fourths of their\nmaternal duties they prove themselves incompetent. They are ignorant\nof what their children wear, and what their children eat, and what\ntheir children read. They intrust to irresponsible persons these young\nimmortals, and allow them to be under influences which may cripple\ntheir bodies, or taint their purity, or spoil their manners, or\ndestroy their souls.\n\nFrom the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you know his mother Hannah did not\nmake it. Out from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported\ncarpets, and down the granite stairs, there has come a great crowd of\nchildren in this day, untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical\nduties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl of crime and\nsensuality. Indolent and unfaithful mothers will make indolent and\nunfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in any house\nwhere the daughters see nothing but slatternness and upsidedownativeness\nin their parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly Samuel will\ngrow up idle.\n\nWho are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions?\nWho are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the\nwalls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets, making the laws,\ngoverning the nations, making the earth to quake, and heave, and roar,\nand rattle with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are they? For\nthe most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old\nhomestead, used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own carpets,\nand plait their own door-mats, and flag their own chairs, and do their\nown work. The stalwart men and the\n\n\nINFLUENTIAL WOMEN\n\nof this day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came from such an\nillustrious ancestry of hard knuckles and homespun.\n\nAnd who are these people in society, light as froth, blown every\nwhither of temptation and fashion--the peddlers of filthy stories, the\ndancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the\ntavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of low wink, and filthy\nchuckle, and brass breast-pins, and rotten associations? For the most\npart, they came from mothers idle and disgusting--the scandal-mongers\nof society, going from house to house, attending to everybody's\nbusiness but their own, believing in witches, and ghosts, and\nhorseshoes to keep the devil out of the churn, and by a godless life\nsetting their children on the very verge of hell. The mothers of\nSamuel Johnson, and of Alfred the Great, and Isaac Newton, and of St.\nAugustine, and of Richard Cecil, and of President Edwards, for the\nmost part were industrious, hard-working mothers.\n\nNow, while I congratulate all Christian mothers upon the wealth and\nthe modern science which may afford them all kinds of help, let me say\nthat every mother ought to be observant of her children's walk, her\nchildren's behavior, her children's food, her children's looks, her\nchildren's companionships. However much help Hannah may have, I think\nshe ought every year, at least, make one garment for Samuel. The Lord\nhave mercy on the man who is so unfortunate as to have had a lazy\nmother!\n\nII. Again, Hannah stands before you as\n\n\nAN INTELLIGENT MOTHER.\n\nFrom the way in which she talked in this chapter, and from the way she\nmanaged this boy, you know she was intelligent. There are no persons\nin the community who need to be so wise and well-informed as mothers.\n\nOh, this work of culture in children for this world and the next! This\nchild is timid, and it must be roused up and pushed out into\nactivity. This child is forward, and he must be held back and tamed\ndown into modesty and politeness. Rewards for one, punishments for\nanother. That which will make George will ruin John. The rod is\nnecessary in one case, while a frown of displeasure is more than\nenough in another. Whipping and a dark closet do not exhaust all the\nrounds of domestic discipline. There have been children who have grown\nup and gone to glory without ever having had their ears boxed.\n\nOh, how much care and intelligence are necessary in the rearing of\nchildren! But in this day, when there are so many books on the\nsubject, no parent is excusable in being ignorant of the best mode of\n\n\nBRINGING UP A CHILD.\n\nIf parents knew more of dietetics there would not be so many dyspeptic\nstomachs and weak nerves and inactive livers among children. If\nparents knew more of physiology there would not be so many curved\nspines and cramped chests and inflamed throats and diseased lungs as\nthere are among children. If parents knew more of art, and were in\nsympathy with all that is beautiful, there would not be so many\nchildren coming out in the world with boorish proclivities. If parents\nknew more of Christ, and practised more of His religion, there would\nnot be so many little feet already starting on the wrong road, and all\naround us voices of riot and blasphemy would not come up with such\necstasy of infernal triumph.\n\nThe eaglets in the eyrie have no advantages over the eaglets of a\nthousand years ago; the kids have no superior way of climbing up the\nrocks than the old goats taught hundreds of years ago; the whelps know\nno more now than did the whelps of ages ago--they are taught no more\nby the lions of the desert; but it is a shame that in this day, when\nthere are so many opportunities of improving ourselves in the best\nmanner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more\nadvancement in this respect than there has been among the kids and the\neaglets and the whelps.\n\nIII. Again, Hannah stands before you as\n\n\nA CHRISTIAN MOTHER.\n\nFrom her prayers and from the way she consecrated her boy to God, I\nknow that she was good. A mother may have the finest culture, the most\nbrilliant surroundings; but she is not fit for her duties unless she\nbe a Christian mother. There may be well-read libraries in the house,\nand exquisite music in the parlor, and the canvases of the best\nartists adorning the walls, and the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful\napparel, and the children be wonderful for their attainments, and\nmake the house ring with laughter and innocent mirth, but there is\nsomething woeful-looking in that house if it be not also the residence\nof a Christian mother.\n\nI bless God that there are not many prayerless mothers--not many of\nthem. The weight of the responsibility is so great that they feel the\nneed of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a\ndivine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into\nthe kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were\nhundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been\nfor the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the\nnursery, they bethought themselves: \"This child God has given me to\nraise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a\nChristian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian?\nLord, help me!\" Are there\n\n\nANXIOUS MOTHERS\n\nwho know nothing of the infinite help of religion? Then I commend to\nthem Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely\nimpossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such\nfair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime\ngets its victims--extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out\nthe smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and\nshriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding\nand blasting and burning with shame and woe.\n\nEvery child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that\nchild shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal\nharmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of\njoy in heaven; or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and,\nafter a life of wrong-doing on earth, it shall go to a home of\nimpenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being\ndecided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson and evening prayer and walk\nand ride and look and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory,\ncrowding all the battlements, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna,\nbrought to God through Christian parentage!\n\nOne hundred and twenty clergymen were together, and they were telling\ntheir experience and their ancestry; and of the one hundred and twenty\nclergymen, how many of them, do you suppose, assigned as the means of\ntheir conversion the influence of a Christian mother? One hundred out\nof the one hundred and twenty! Philip Doddridge was brought to God by\nthe Scripture lesson on the Dutch tiles of a chimney fireplace. The\nmother thinks she is only rocking a child, but at the same time she\nmay be rocking the fate of nations, rocking the glories of heaven. The\nsame maternal power that may lift the child up may press a child down.\n\nA daughter came to\n\n\nA WORLDLY MOTHER\n\nand said she was anxious about her sins, and she had been praying all\nnight. The mother said: \"Oh, stop praying! I don't believe in praying.\nGet over all these religious notions and I'll give you a dress that\nwill cost $500, and you may wear it next week to that party.\" The\ndaughter took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle the gayest of\nall the gay, that night; and sure enough all the religious impressions\nwere gone and she stopped praying. A few months after she came to die,\nand in her closing moments said: \"Mother, I wish you would bring me\nthat dress that cost $500.\" The mother thought it a very strange\nrequest, but she brought it to please the dying child. \"Now,\" said the\ndaughter, \"mother, hang that dress on the foot of my bed,\" and the\ndress was hung there, on the foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got\nup on one elbow and looked at her mother, and then pointed to the\ndress, and said: \"Mother, that dress is the price of my soul.\" Oh,\nwhat a momentous thing it is to be a mother!\n\nIV. Again, and lastly, Hannah stands before you\n\n\nTHE REWARDED MOTHER.\n\nFor all the coats she made for Samuel, for all the prayers she offered\nfor him, for the discipline exerted over him she got abundant\ncompensation in the piety and the usefulness and the popularity of her\nson Samuel; and that is true in all ages. Every mother gets full pay\nfor all the prayers and tears in behalf of her children. That man\nuseful in commercial life; that man prominent in a profession; that\nmaster mechanic--why, every step he takes in life has an echo of\ngladness in the old heart that long ago taught him to be a Christian,\nand heroic and earnest.\n\nThe story of what you have done, or what you have written, of the\ninfluence you exerted, has gone back to the old homestead--for there\nis some one always ready to carry good tidings--and that story makes\nthe needle in the old mother's tremulous hand fly quicker, and the\nflail in the father's hand come down on the barn floor with a vigorous\nthump. Parents love to hear good news from their children. Do you send\nthem good news always?\n\nLook out for the young man who speaks of his father as \"the governor,\"\nthe \"squire,\" or the \"old chap.\" Look out for the young woman who\ncalls her mother her \"maternal ancestor,\" or the \"old woman.\" \"The eye\nthat mocketh at his father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the\nravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat\nit.\"\n\nGod grant that all these parents may have the great satisfaction of\nseeing their children grow up Christians. But, oh! the pang of that\nmother, who, after a life of street gadding and gossip retailing,\nhanging on the children the fripperies and follies of this world, sees\nthose children tossed out on the sea of life like foam on the wave, or\nnonentities in a world where only bravery and stalwart character can\nstand the shock! But blessed be the mother who looks upon her children\nas sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.\n\nOh! the satisfaction of Hannah in seeing Samuel serving at the altar;\nof Mother Eunice in seeing her Timothy learned in the Scriptures. That\nis the mother's recompense, to see children coming up useful in the\nworld, reclaiming the lost, healing the sick, pitying the ignorant,\nearnest and useful in every sphere. That throws a new light back on\nthe old family Bible whenever she reads it, and that will be ointment\nto soothe the aching limbs of decrepitude, and light up the closing\nhours of life's day with the glories of an autumnal sunset!\n\nThere she sits,\n\n\nTHE OLD CHRISTIAN MOTHER,\n\nripe for heaven. Her eyesight is almost gone, but the splendors of the\ncelestial city kindle up her vision. The gray light of heaven's morn\nhas struck through the gray locks which are folded back over the\nwrinkled temples. She stoops very much now under the burden of care\nshe used to carry for her children. She sits at home, too old to find\nher way to the house of God; but while she sits there, all the past\ncomes back, and the children that forty years ago tripped around her\narmchair with their griefs and joys and sorrows--those children are\ngone now. Some caught up into a better realm, where they shall never\ndie, and others out in the broad world, testing the excellency of a\nChristian mother's discipline. Her last days are full of peace; and\ncalmer and sweeter will her spirit become, until the gates of life\nshall lift and let in the worn-out pilgrim into eternal springtide and\nyouth, where the limbs never ache, and the eyes never grow dim, and\nthe staff of the exhausted and decrepit pilgrim shall become the palm\nof the immortal athlete!\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.\n\n    \"Whose son art thou, thou young man?\"--SAMUEL 17:58.\n\n\nNever was there a more unequal fight than that between David and\nGoliath. David five feet high; Goliath ten. David a shepherd boy,\nbrought up amid rural scenes; Goliath a warrior by profession. Goliath\na mountain of braggadocia; David a marvel of humility. Goliath armed\nwith an iron spear; David armed with a sling with smooth stones from\nthe brook. But you are not to despise these latter weapons. There was\na regiment of slingers in the Assyrian army and a regiment of slingers\nin the Egyptian army, and they made terrible execution, and they could\ncast a stone with as much precision and force as now can be hurled\nshot or shell. The Greeks in their army had slingers who would throw\nleaden plummets inscribed with the irritating words: \"Take this!\" So\nit was a mighty weapon David employed in that famous combat.\n\nA Jewish rabbi says that the probability is that Goliath was in such\ncontempt for David, that in a paroxysm of laughter he threw his head\nback, and his helmet fell off, and David saw the uncovered forehead,\nand his opportunity had come, and taking his sling and swinging it\naround his head two or three times, and aiming at that uncovered\nforehead, he crushed it in like an egg-shell. The battle over,\n\n\nBEHOLD A TABLEAU:\n\nKing Saul sitting, little David standing, his fingers clutched into\nthe hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there\nholding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of\nthe complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what\nparentage was honored by such heroism, and in my text he asks David\nhis pedigree: \"Whose son art thou, thou young man?\"\n\nThe king saw what you and I see, that this question of heredity is a\nmighty question. The longer I live the more\n\n\nI BELIEVE IN BLOOD\n\n--good blood, bad blood, proud blood, humble blood, honest blood,\nthieving blood, heroic blood, cowardly blood. The tendency may skip a\ngeneration or two, but it is sure to come out, as in a little child\nyou sometimes see a similarity to a great-grandfather whose picture\nhangs on the wall. That the physical and mental and moral qualities\nare inheritable is patent to any one who keeps his eyes open. The\nsimilarity is so striking sometimes as to be amusing. Great families,\nregal or literary, are apt to have the characteristics all down\nthrough the generations, and what is more perceptible in such families\nmay be seen on a smaller scale in all families. A thousand years have\nno power to obliterate the difference.\n\n\nROYAL RASCALS.\n\nThe large lip of the House of Austria is seen in all the generations,\nand is called the Hapsburg lip. The House of Stuart always means in\nall generations cruelty and bigotry and sensuality. Witness Queen of\nScotts. Witness Charles I. and Charles II. Witness James I. and James\nII. and all the other scoundrels of that imperial line.\n\nScottish blood means persistence, English blood means reverence for\nthe ancient, Welsh blood means religiosity, Danish blood means\nfondness for the sea, Indian blood means roaming disposition, Celtic\nblood means fervidity, Roman blood means conquest.\n\nThe Jewish facility for accumulation you may trace clear back to\nAbraham, of whom the Bible says \"he was rich in silver and gold and\ncattle,\" and to Isaac and Jacob, who had the same\n\n\nFAMILY CHARACTERISTICS.\n\nSome families are characterized by longevity, and they have a tenacity\nof life positively Methuselahish. Others are characterized by\nGoliathian stature, and you can see it for one generation, two\ngenerations, five generations, in all the generations. Vigorous\ntheology runs on in the line of the Alexanders. Tragedy runs on in the\nfamily of the Kembles. Literature runs on in the line of the\nTrollopes. Philanthropy runs on in the line of the Wilberforces.\nStatesmanship runs on in the line of the Adamses. Henry and Catharine\nof Navarre religious, all their families religious. The celebrated\nfamily of the Casini, all mathematicians. The celebrated family of the\nMedici--grandfather, son and Catharine--all remarkable for keen\nintellect. The celebrated family of Gustavus Adolphus, all warriors.\n\nThis law of heredity asserts itself without reference to social or\npolitical condition, for you sometimes find the ignoble in high place\nand the honorable in obscure place. A descendant of Edward I. a toll\ngatherer. A descendant of Edward III. a door-keeper. A descendant of\nthe Duke of Northumberland a trunk-maker. Some of the mightiest\nfamilies of England are extinct, while some of those most honored in\nthe peerage go back to an ancestry of hard knuckles and rough\nexterior. This law of heredity entirely independent of social or\npolitical condition.\n\nThen you find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having\nfull swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William\nis the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be\nset forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you\nnot remember how the Bible speaks of \"a chosen generation,\" of \"the\ngeneration of the righteous,\" of \"the generation of vipers,\" of an\n\"untoward generation,\" of \"a stubborn generation,\" of \"the iniquity of\nthe past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth\ngeneration?\" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a\nprojectile hurled from mightiest catapult: \"Whose son art thou, thou\nyoung man?\"\n\n\"Well,\" says some one, \"that theory discharges me from all\nresponsibility. Born of sanctified parents we are bound to be good and\nwe cannot help ourselves. Born of unrighteous parentage we are bound\nto be evil and we cannot help ourselves.\"\n\n\nTWO INACCURACIES.\n\nAs much as if you should say, \"The centripetal force in nature has a\ntendency to bring everything to the centre, and therefore all things\ncome to the centre. The centrifugal force in nature has a tendency to\nthrow out everything to the periphery, and therefore everything will\ngo out to the periphery.\" You know as well as I know that you can make\nthe centripetal overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the\ncentrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide\nof good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as\nin the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President\nBurr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the\nscourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian\nancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of\nthis day are those who have come of an ancestry of which it would not\nbe courteous to speak in their presence.\n\n\nYOUR DUTY.\n\nThe practical and useful object of this sermon is to show to you that\nif you have come of a Christian ancestry, then you are solemnly bound\nto preserve and develop the glorious inheritance; or if you have come\nof a depraved ancestry, then it is your duty to brace yourself against\nthe evil tendency by all prayer and Christian determination, and you\nare to find out what are the family frailties, and in arming the\ncastle put the strongest guard at the weakest gate. With these smooth\nstones from the brook I hope to strike you, not where David struck\nGoliath, in the head, but where Nathan struck David, in the heart.\n\"Whose son art thou, thou young man?\"\n\nThere is something in the periodical holidays to bring up\n\n\nTHE OLD FOLKS.\n\nSometime in the winter holiday, when we are accustomed to gather our\nfamilies together, old times have come back again, and our thoughts\nhave been set to the tune of \"Auld Lang Syne.\" The old folks were so\nbusy at such times in making us happy, and perhaps on less resource\nmade their sons and daughters happier than you on larger resource are\nable to make your sons and daughters happy. The snow lay two feet\nabove their graves, but they shook off the white blankets and mingled\nin the holiday festivities--the same wrinkles, the same stoop of\nshoulder under the weight of age, the same old style of dress or coat,\nthe same smile, the same tones of voice. I hope you remember them\nbefore they went away. If not, I hope there are those who have recited\nto you what they were, and that there may be in your house some\narticle of dress or furniture with which you associate their memories.\nI want to arouse the most sacred memories of your heart while I make\nthe impassioned interrogatory in regard to your pedigree: \"Whose son\nart thou, thou young man?\"\n\nI. First, I accost all those who are descended of a\n\n\nCHRISTIAN ANCESTRY.\n\nI do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people\nnow, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps\nthere was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised\nyou. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved,\nand perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But\nyou are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.\nFrom what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the\nfamily altar and at neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had\ninvited God into their heart and life. There was something that\nsustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about\ntheir destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as\ncertainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nThat early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when\nyou got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the\nfresh air because you thought your mother was looking at you. You\nhave never been very happy in sin because of a sweet old face that\nwould present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you\nuntil they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who\nspoke. There was an estate not mentioned in the last will and\ntestament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian\nentreaty and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to\nhear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold,\nand it was share and share alike. But there was\n\n\nAN UNWRITTEN WILL\n\nthat read something like this: \"In the name of God, Amen. I, being of\nsound mind, bequeath to my children all my prayers for their\nsalvation; I bequeath to them all the results of a lifetime's toil; I\nbequeath to them the Christian religion which has been so much comfort\nto me, and I hope may be solace for them; I bequeath to them a hope of\nreunion when the partings of life are over; share and share alike may\nthey have in eternal riches. I bequeath to them the wish that they may\navoid my errors and copy anything that may have been worthy. In the\nname of the God who made me, and the Christ who redeemed me, and the\nHoly Ghost who sanctifies me, I make this my last will and testament.\nWitness, all ye hosts of heaven. Witness, time, witness, eternity.\nSigned, sealed, and delivered in this our dying hour. Father and\nMother.\"\n\nYou did not get that will proved at the surrogate's office; but I take\nit out to-day and I read it to you; I take it out of the alcoves of\nyour heart; I shake the dust off it, I ask you will you accept that\ninheritance, or will you break the will? O ye of Christian ancestry,\nyou have a responsibility vast beyond all measurement! God will not\nlet you off with just being as good as ordinary people when you had\nsuch extraordinary advantage. Ought not a flower planted in a\nhot-house be more thrifty than a flower planted outside in the storm?\nOught not a factory turned by the Housatonic do more work than a\nfactory turned by a thin and shallow mountain stream? Ought not you of\ngreat early opportunity be better than those who had a cradle\nunblessed?\n\n\nTHE CAPITAL ACCOUNT.\n\nA father sets his son up in business. He keeps an account of all the\nexpenditures. So much for store fixtures, so much for rent, so much\nfor this, so much for that, and all the items aggregated, and the\nfather expects the son to give an account. Your heavenly Father\ncharges against you all the advantages of a pious ancestry--so many\nprayers, so much Christian example, so many kind entreaties--all these\ngracious influences one tremendous aggregate, and He asks you for an\naccount of it.\n\nOught not you to be better than those who had no such advantages?\nBetter have been a foundling picked up off the city commons than with\nsuch magnificent inheritance of consecration to turn out\nindifferently.\n\nOught not you, my brother, to be better, having had Christian nurture,\nthan that man who can truly say this morning: \"The first word I\nremember my father speaking to me was an oath; the first time I\nremember my father taking hold of me was in wrath; I never saw a Bible\ntill I was ten years of age, and then I was told it was a pack of\nlies. The first twenty years of my life I was associated with the\nvicious. I seemed to be walled in by sin and death.\" Now, my brother,\nought you not--I leave it as a matter of fairness with you--ought you\nnot to be far better than those who had no early Christian influence?\n\nStanding as you do between the generation that is past and the\ngeneration that is to come, are you going to pass the blessing on, or\nare you going to have your life the gulf in which that tide of\nblessing shall drop out of sight forever? You are\n\n\nTHE TRUSTEE OF PIETY\n\nin that ancestral line, and are you going to augment or squander that\nsolemn trust fund? are you going to disinherit your sons and daughters\nof the heirloom which your parents left you? Ah! that cannot be\npossible, that cannot be possible that you are going to take such a\nposition as that. You are very careful about the life insurances, and\ncareful about the deeds, and careful about the mortgages, and careful\nabout the title of your property, because when you step off the stage\nyou want your children to get it all. Are you making no provision that\nthey shall get grandfather and grandmother's religion? Oh, what a last\nwill and testament you are making, my brother! \"In the name of God,\nAmen. I, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. I\nbequeath to my children all the money I ever made and all the houses I\nown; but I disinherit them, I rob them of the ancestral grace and the\nChristian influence that I inherited. I have squandered that on my own\nworldliness. Share and share alike must they in the misfortune and the\neverlasting outrage. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of\nGod and men and angels and devils and all the generations of earth\nand heaven and hell, March, 1886.\"\n\nO ye of highly favored ancestry, wake up this morning to a sense of\nyour opportunity and your responsibility. I think there must be\n\n\nAN OLD CRADLE,\n\nor a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of\nmidnight supplication in your behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair\nin which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is\nthe old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that\nawful night when there were but three of you awake--you and God and\nmother? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old\nfamily Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: \"My son,\nmy daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us\nall our lives and to whom we commended you in our prayers living and\ndying? By the memory of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our\ndying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our\nspirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf for the new year.\"\nOh, the power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a young man of\nNew York who attended a prayer-meeting one night and asked for\nprayer, and then went home and wrote down these words:\n\n\nAN ENTRY IN A DIARY.\n\n\"Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother went to heaven, my\nbeautiful, blessed mother, and I have been alone, tossed up and down\nupon the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I ever go to\nheaven? She told me I must meet her in heaven. When she took her boy's\nhand in hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me, and gazed\nearnestly and long into my face, and then lifted them to heaven in\nthat last prayer, she prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder\nif I ever shall.\n\n\"My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed mother's prayers! Did ever\nboy have such a mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have not\nheard her pray until to-night. I have heard all her prayers over\nagain. They have had, in fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she\nwas wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so\nimportunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a\nChristian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a\ncheerful and happy Christian. There is\n\n\n\"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.\n\n\"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect\nher precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.\nHow often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain\nfor your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in\nvain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much\ninstruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to\nheaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,\ntrusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never\ndoubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my\nmother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made\nmyself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a\nSaviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of\nexistence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no\nrudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all\naway from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish.\"\n\nDo you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:\n\"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and\ngoodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and all I am I\nconsecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?\" Oh, the power of\nancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!\n\nII. But I turn for a moment to those who had\n\n\nEVIL PARENTAGE,\n\nand I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven and the\nmightiest triumphs and the brightest crowns will be for those who had\nevil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as\nsplendid a gentleman as I know of to-day had for father a man who died\nblaspheming God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their\nears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful\nChristian ministers of to-day was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide\nof evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and\nyet men have clung to a rock and been rescued.\n\nThere is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many\nmillions that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate sent\nback a paper of tacks because they were two cents more than he\nexpected. Grip and grind and gouge in the fourth generation--I suppose\nit will be grip and grind and gouge in the twentieth generation. The\nthirst for intoxicants has burned down through the arteries of a\nhundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other\nfamilies. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes another form of evil.\nBut\n\n\nIT MAY BE RESISTED,\n\nit has been resisted. If the family frailty be avarice, cultivate\nunselfishness and charity, and teach your children never to eat an\napple without offering somebody else half of it. Is the family frailty\ncombativeness, keep out of the company of quick-tempered people, and\nnever answer an impertinent question until you have counted a hundred\nboth ways, and after you have written an angry letter keep it a week\nbefore you send it, and then burn it up! Is the family frailty\ntimidity and cowardice, cultivate backbone, read the biography of\nbrave men like Joshua or Paul, and see if you cannot get a little iron\nin your blood. Find out what the family frailty is, and set body, mind\nand soul in battle array.\n\n\nCONQUER YOUR WILL.\n\nI think the genealogical table was put in the first chapter of the New\nTestament, not only to show our Lord's pedigree, but to show that a\nman may rise up in an ancestral line and beat back successfully all\nthe influences of bad heredity. See in that genealogical table that\ngood King Asa came of vile King Abia. See in that genealogical table\nthat Joseph and Mary and the most illustrious Being that ever touched\nour world, or ever will touch it, had in their ancestral line\nscandalous Rehoboam and Tamar and Bathsheba. If this world is ever to\nbe Edenized--and it will be--all the infected families of the earth\nare to be regenerated, and there will some one arise in each family\nline and open a new genealogical table. There will be some Joseph in\nthe line to reverse the evil influence of Rehoboam, and there will be\nsome Mary in the line to reverse the evil influence of Bathsheba.\nPerhaps the star of hope may point down to your manger. Perhaps you\nare to be the hero or the heroine that is to put down the brakes and\nstop that long train of genealogical tendencies and switch it off on\nanother track from that on which it has been running for a century.\nYou do that, and I will promise you as fine a palace as the architects\nof heaven can build, the archway inscribed with the words: \"More than\nconqueror.\"\n\n\nADOPTED CHILDREN.\n\nBut whatever your heredity, let me say, you may be sons and daughters\nof the Lord God Almighty. Estranged children from the homestead come\nback through the open gate of adoption. There is royal blood in our\nveins. There are crowns in our escutcheon. Our Father is King. Our\nBrother is King. We may be kings and queens unto God forever. Come and\nsit down on the ivory bench of the palace. Come and wash in the\nfountains that fall into the basins of crystal and alabaster. Come and\nlook out of the upholstered window upon gardens of azalea and\namaranth. Hear the full burst of the orchestra while you banquet with\npotentates and victors. Oh, when the text sweeps backward, let it not\nstop at the cradle that rocked your infancy, but at the cradle that\nrocked the first world, and when the text sweeps forward, let it not\nstop at your grave, but at the throne on which you may reign forever\nand ever! \"Whose son art thou, thou young man?\" Son of God! Heir of\nmortality! Take your inheritance!\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOTHER OF ALL.\n\n    \"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he\n    slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh\n    instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from\n    man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.\"--GENESIS\n    2:21, 22.\n\n\nIt is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever\nsince sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings\nand scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and\nornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air\nin twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions\nwalk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday\nafternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach\nall ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this\nparadisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of\n\n\nA CORRESPONDING INTELLIGENCE\n\njust landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I\nspeak--Eve, the first, the fairest and the best.\n\nI make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border\nthem with pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and\nthere are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple\nunder the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon,\nand orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There\nare woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred\nspaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees\nthe larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the\nbrightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp\nand carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and\ndeath as compared with\n\n\nTHE RESIDENCE OF THE WOMAN\n\nof the text, the subject of my morning story. Never since have such\nskies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has\nriver wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the\nHavilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddakel, even the pebbles being bdellium\nand onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What\nflowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost\nto chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the\ngrass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's\nhum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness and love and joy.\n\nRight there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred\n\n\nTHE FIRST MARRIAGE.\n\nAdam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and pronounced\nthe ceremony when he said: \"Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.\"\n\n\nA FORBIDDEN TREE\n\nstood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day\nalone looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders\nif it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says:\n\"I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage\nto the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it\ndown to examine it.\" She examined the fruit. She said: \"I do not think\nthere can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it.\" She put the\nfruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the\nfruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let\nthe heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the\nhills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep,\nhell-rending howl:\n\n\n\"THE WORLD IS LOST!\"\n\nBeasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw, and\nsting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds\ntroop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass.\nBlastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are\nsnapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents\nturned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted\nmyriads of a ruined race.\n\nDo you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated\n\n\nINQUISITIVENESS?\n\nShe wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six\nthousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity. Healthy\ncuriosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science and\nfor religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the\ngeologist and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of\nnature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the\nantiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried\nHerculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulchre there came up\nshaft and terrace and amphitheatre. Healthful curiosity has enlarged\nthe telescopic vision of the astronomer until worlds hidden in the\ndistant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising\nthe Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassoed with\nresplendent law.\n\n\nHEALTHFUL CURIOSITY\n\nhas gone down and found the tracks of the eternal God in the polypi\nand the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah\nencamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the\nspots on the sun, and the larvae in a beech leaf, and the light under\nfire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from\nChimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculae that make up the\nphosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and\nspheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march\nof God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces\nthat were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and\nshuttles--forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the\nmountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and\nbooms, with strange mechanism, and ships with nostrils of hot steam\nand yokes of fire draw the continents together.\n\nI say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden\njars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles, and\nother magnifying glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the\nnatural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God\nfor the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the\nmechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zooelogical curiosity of\nCuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that\nunhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and\ntens of thousands into ruin.\n\nEve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted,\nand that\n\n\nCURIOSITY BLASTED HER\n\nand blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by\nunhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole\nof God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all\nhuman inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out\nof joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or\nhave come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into\nruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from\nwhich we may eat and get advantage; but from certain\n\n\nTREES OF MYSTERY\n\nhow many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity,\nresurrection--in the discussion of these subjects hundreds and\nthousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually\nbeen kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not\nunderstand who Melchisedec was not!\n\nOh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It\nis seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the\neye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a\nfalsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About\nother people's apparel, about other people's business, about other\npeople's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are\nover anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they\nfatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of\ntittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house\nColonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever\nhath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable\nsecret, let him come and sacrifice it to\n\n\nTHIS GODDESS OF SPLUTTER.\n\nThousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not\nbelong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this\ncomputation of moral algebra: good sense plus good breeding, minus\ncuriosity, equals minding your own affairs!\n\nThen, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm\nof\n\n\nFRENCH NOVELS,\n\nto see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced\nthem! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They\nwant to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance\nwhile they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching\nthemselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering\nwith curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage\nhealthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated\ncuriosity.\n\n\nTREACHEROUS FRUIT.\n\nThe subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits\nthat are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony.\nForbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also\nto take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand\nyears of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that\nluxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great\nwretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but\nthere is death at the bottom. Intoxication has great exhilaration for\na while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars\nwhere others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich,\nand turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the\ndreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or\nis prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands\non the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is\nground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that\ncrackle with all-consuming torture? \"Rejoice, O young man, in thy\nyouth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know\nthou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!\"\n\n\nSWEET AT THE START,\n\nhorrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly\nmirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the\nlast trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own\nimage.\n\n\"Aha! aha!\" says the roystering inebriate; \"this is joy for you; fill\nhigh your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's\nrags and my God's defiance.\" And he knows not that a fiend stirs the\ngoblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust\ntheir forked tongues hissing through the froth on the rim.\n\n\nPERDITION BOUGHT FOR A SIXPENCE.\n\nThe Philistines jeered and laughed and shouted at Samson. Oh, they\nwanted him to make sport for them, and he made sport for them! How\nbright and gay was the scene for a little while! After awhile the\ngiant puts one hand against this pillar, and the other hand against\nthis pillar, and bows himself, and three thousand merry-makers are\nmashed like grapes in a wine-press. Sin rapturous at the start, awful\nat the last.\n\nThat one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a\nblow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a\nbutcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you\nwould have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and\ndisplay the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the\ndisease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the\nwretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open\nall the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic\ntransgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world\nand struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues\nupon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened like a\nleech famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at\nthe start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!\n\nAnd there are those who are\n\n\nVOTARIES OF PLEASURE.\n\nLet me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and\nyour summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are\nloud voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with\nterror. You are past the \"Narrows,\" and almost outside the \"Hook,\" and\nif the Atlantic take thee, frail mortal, thou shalt never get to shore\nagain. Put back, row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore\ncasteth a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Oh, are there not some\nof you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a\nvessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? Thou nearest the\nbreakers, one heave upon the rock. Oh, what an awful crash was that!\nAnother lunge may crush thee beneath the spars or grind thy bones to\npowder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard!\nTrust not that loose plank nor attempt the move, but quickly clasp the\nfeet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until He hear\nthee, \"Lord, save me, or I perish.\" Sin beautiful at the start--oh,\nhow sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads\nyou is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The\npromise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen\nsword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous handwritings on\nthe wall.\n\n\nHIDEOUS ATTRACTIVENESS.\n\nObserve also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to\ngreat attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such\nperfection of womanhood. You could not suggest an attractiveness to\nthe body or suggest any refinement to the manner. You could add no\ngracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the\nvoice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman to be the companion of a\nperfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in\naccord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against\nGod's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the\nfruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults,\nthat have set the universe a-wailing,\n\n\nA TERRIBLE OFFSET\n\nto all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and\nwomen naturally vulgar going into transgression. We expect that\npeople who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but\nhow shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to\nthe refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of\nScots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more\nappalling. The genius of Catharine II., of Russia, only sets forth in\nmore powerful contrast her unappeasable ambition. The translations\nfrom the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful\nqualifications for a queen, made the more disgusting her\ncapriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness\nof Byron's mind made the more alarming Byron's sensuality.\n\nLet no one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or\nexquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise\napologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness,\nfor any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward\ncan give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for vice\nhell deep.\n\nMy subject also impresses me with the regal\n\n\nINFLUENCE OF WOMAN.\n\nWhen I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the\ngenerations that have followed, it suggests to me the great power all\nwomen have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you,\nwith the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and\nthe stage. They mean nothing, they are accepted as nothing. Woman's\nnobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence, and when I\nsee this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole\nhuman race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a\nblow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons,\nor up among the thrones.\n\nOf course, I am not speaking of representative women--of Eve, who\nruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike\nthrough the head of Sisera the warrior; of Esther, who overcame\nroyalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess;\nof Mary, who nursed the world's Saviour; of Grandmother Lois,\nimmortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove\nthe dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie\nAntoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a\nmob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I\nspeak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who,\nunambitious for political power, as\n\n\nWIVES AND MOTHERS\n\nand sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of\nhome.\n\nWhen at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny\nof nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence\ncame from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and\nsorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for\nheaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city;\nand the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the\nbrother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the\naged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and\nmother down the steep of years. Need I go into history to find you\nillustrations? Ah no; in your own memory there was at least one such!\nWhen I come to speak of womanly influence, my mind always wanders off\nto\n\n\nONE MODEL,\n\nthe aged one who, twenty years ago, we put away for the resurrection.\nAbout eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father\nand mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New\nJersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long\nlife of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her\nend in peace. No child of want ever came to her door and was turned\nempty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one\nasked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When\nthe angel of life came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to\nrejoice at the incarnation. When the angel of death came to a\nneighbor's dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial.\n\nWe had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of\nmy father, say, \"O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor,\nbut I do ask that they all may be the subjects of thy comforting\ngrace?\" Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had\nbut one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent\nmissionary son; and when the ship from China anchored in New York\nharbor, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his\npaternal home, she said: \"Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant depart\nin peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.\" The prayer was soon\nanswered.\n\nIt was an autumnal day very much like this when we gathered from afar\nand found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She\nlooked very natural, the hands very much as when they were employed in\nkindness for her children. Whatever else we forget, we never forget\nthe look of mother's hands. As we stood there by the casket, we could\nnot help but say: \"Don't she look beautiful?\" It was a cloudless day\nwhen, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting-place.\nThe withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and\nthe sun shone on the Raritan River until it looked like fire; but more\ncalm and beautiful and radiant was the setting sun of that aged\npilgrim's life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more\ndeath. Dear mother! Beautiful mother!\n\n    \"Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,\n    While the pure spirit rests with God.\"\n\nI need not go back and show you Zenobia or Semiramis or Isabella as\nwonders of womanly excellence or greatness, when I in this moment\npoint to your own picture gallery of memory, and show you the one face\nthat you remember so well, and arouse all your holy reminiscences, and\nstart you in new consecration to God by the pronunciation of that\ntender, beautiful, glorious word, \"Mother! mother!\"\n\n\n\n\nSISTERLY INFLUENCE.\n\n    \"And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to\n    him.\"--EXODUS 2:4.\n\n\nPrincess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the\nlattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious\nboat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have\nbeen useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby\nboy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America\ncarried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves\nof papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of\nthat material, as we learn from Pliny, and Herodotus, and\nTheophrastus.\n\n\nMIRIAM'S VIGIL.\n\n\"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born,\" had been Pharaoh's order. To\nsave her son, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, had put him in\nthat queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood on the bank\nwatching that craft with its precious burden. She was far enough off\nnot to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer\nprotection. There she stands on the bank, Miriam the poetess, Miriam\nthe quick-witted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after\ntime she became so mad with that very brother for marrying a woman she\ndid not like, that she made a great family row, and was struck with\nleprosy.\n\nMiriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults like all the rest of\nus. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A\nstrong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a\nsudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water-fowl, might\nswoop, and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or\nhippopotamus crawling through the rushes might craunch the babe.\nMiriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each\nside of her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the\nsun, came down and entered her bathing-house. When from the lattice\nshe saw that boat she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were\npulled back from the face of the child and the boy looked up he cried\naloud, for he was hungry and frightened, and would not even let the\nprincess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than\nacknowledge any one of the court as mother.\n\n\nAN ADROIT MAIDEN.\n\nNow Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to\nthe child, leaps from the bank and rushes down and offers to get a\nnurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings Jochebed, the\nbaby's mother, incognito, not sure of the court knowing that she was\nthe mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for\nits fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire\nJochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my\nhands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful, brilliant,\nand strategic sister!\n\n\"Go home,\" someone might have said to Miriam. \"Why risk yourself out\nthere alone on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in\ndanger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian; go home!\" No;\nMiriam, the sister, most lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses,\nthe brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty\ncenturies of the world's history have never had so much involved in\nthe arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus\nboat calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to be a non-such in\nhistory. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer,\nconqueror, deliverer.\n\n\nHEBREW LEGENDS.\n\nHe had such remarkable beauty in childhood that Josephus says, when he\nwas carried along the road, people stopped to gaze at him, and\nworkmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully\nput his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his\nfoot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child\nmight yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the\nJewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before the child,\none containing rubies, and the other burning coals. And if he took the\ncoals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he was to die. For\nsome reason the child took one of the coals, and put it in his mouth,\nso that his life was spared, although it burned the tongue till he was\nindistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread\nopen the palms of his hands in prayer and the Red Sea parted to let\ntwo million five hundred thousand people escape. And he put the palms\nof his hands together in prayer and the Red Sea closed on a\nstrangulated host.\n\n\nUNIQUE BURIAL.\n\nHis life was unutterably grand, his burial must be on the same scale.\nGod would let neither man nor saint nor archangel have anything to do\nwith weaving for him a shroud or digging for him a grave. The\nomnipotent God left His throne in heaven one day, and if the question\nwas asked, \"Whither is the King of the Universe going?\" the answer\nwas, \"I am going down to bury Moses.\" And the Lord took this mightiest\nof men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear, and Moses ran his\neye over the magnificent range of country. Here, the valley of\nEsdraelon, where the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and\nyonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon, and Gerizim, and hills of\nJudea; and the village of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho\nyonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost took the old\nlawgiver's breath away as he looked at it.\n\nAnd then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye\nof Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the\ngreat lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased;\nand his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: \"To the skies,\nthou immortal spirit!\" And then one divine hand was put against the\nback of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God\nlaid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in\nthe Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed\nin crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into\nan everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only\nobsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, and undertaker,\nand grave-digger, and mourner were ended.\n\n\nTHE WORLD INDEBTED.\n\nOh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an\nimportant thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of\nriver plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one\npassenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming\neternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from\nthe perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought\nthat wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to\nbe the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from\nthe rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the\nGod-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house,\nwould have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of\nher own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there\nbeen no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for\nfaithful sisterhood!\n\nFor how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a\ndeliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted\nto a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the\nfarm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuous homes! Come up from the\nbanks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the\nMobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and\nlet us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in\nlaw and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics\nand religion!\n\nIf I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants,\nand ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and\ntrades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and\nperhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would\nrise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how\nmuch of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have\ngone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother\nsailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the\nbanks of self-denial.\n\n\nTHE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.\n\nMiriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers,\nare younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the\nbrother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off\nfrom her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back\nwater-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister\ndecides the direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By\ngentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it\ntoward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a\nbrighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even\nreligion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are\npeace.\n\n\nHER TOILSOME LIFE.\n\nThe older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the\nfamily was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of\nher younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my\nsympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and\ngetting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time\nshe gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her\nattractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity,\nand she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an\nungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.\n\nIn most families the two most undesirable places in the record of\nbirths are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out\nwith the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last\nbecause she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that\nsweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters\nwho sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of\nthe Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon\nthem will have to turn out to let them, pass.\n\n\nHELP TO MAKE MEN.\n\nLet sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It\nis hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother\ncan ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses.\nThere is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I\ntell you what your brother will be--either a blessing or a curse to\nsociety, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like\nMoses, have the choice between rubies and living coals, and your\ninfluence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like\nMoses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and\nmother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of\nhomes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well\ninvested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger\nbrothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the\nday the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will\ncome back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, censorious,\nunaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own\nirritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his\ninfirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few\nyears of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected\nback upon you some day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis\nwhere he would have failed but for you.\n\n\nTEASING A FAMILY CURSE.\n\nDon't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability. Don't talk\ndiscouragingly about his future. Don't let Miriam get down off the\nbank of the Nile, and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don't\ntease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease.\nThat spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most\ndevilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another\nform of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and\nmakes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less\nblameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your\nsister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your\nbrother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the\nbody, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and\nlacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of\ninnumerable households that the brothers tease the sisters, and the\nsisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the\nshape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by\nrevealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an\n\"Ahem!\" Tease! Tease! Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says: \"He\nthat hateth his brother is a murderer.\" Now, when you, by teasing,\nmake your brother or sister hate you, you turn him or her into a\nmurderer or murderess.\n\n\nBEWARE OF JEALOUSY.\n\nDon't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as it so often does,\nbecause her brother gets more honor or more means. Even Miriam, the\nheroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She\nhad possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and\nnot only so but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so\ndisgusted and outraged at Moses, first because he had married at all,\nand next, because he had practised miscegenation, that she is drawn\ninto a frenzy, and then begins to turn white, and gets white as a\ncorpse, and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk;\nthe fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom\nshe had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that\nbrings her restoration.\n\nLet there be no room in all your house for jealousy, either to sit or\nstand. It is a leprous abomination. Your brother's success, O sisters!\nis your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while\nMoses the brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Red\nSea, Miriam, the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted\nand glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the\ncymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was\nsmothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian helmet went under.\n\n\nFAMILY QUARRELS.\n\nHow strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand\ntogether, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling\nabout a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with\ntheir wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery\nthat with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each\nother fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age\nof maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the\nsame father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave\nin the cemetery.\n\n\nTHE ROTHSCHILDS.\n\nIf you only knew it, your interests are identical. Of all the\nfamilies of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most\nconspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm\nRothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about\nhim, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise\nthat they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction,\nthey have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the\nraising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen.\nThat illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes,\na united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude\nof dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary\nimpression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling!\nSister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will\nlovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous\ndisaster strike.\n\n\nTHE FAMILY BOND.\n\nWhen father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have\nnot already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the\nonly ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for\nyour deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same\ncradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled for by the\nsame father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of\nall the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who\nstarted you with the highest hopes for your happiness and\nprosperity--I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the\nsister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother\nwill see that the sister never wants an escort.\n\nOh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and\ndamning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would\nhardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would\nmake a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest\nprayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of\nsins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of\nthe world, and the brother flee off in another direction in\ndissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at\nthe iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a\nconsumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living\ntogether for years, very often do not know each other, and that they\nsee only the imperfections and none of the virtues!\n\n\nA RUSSIAN BANQUET.\n\nGeneral Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, had in early life wandered off\nin the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a\nfortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a\nbanquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited\na plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted,\ncame, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife\nwere placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general\nasked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had\ntwo brothers and a sister. \"No other brothers?\" \"My younger brother\nwent off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago\nkilled.\" Then the general said: \"Soldiers, I am this man's younger\nbrother whom he thought was dead.\" And how loud was the cheer, and how\nwarm was the embrace!\n\nBrother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other\nas they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is\ngrouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud\nand unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some\nwoman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man.\nThat brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in\nJune. Come, let me introduce you: \"Moses, this is Miriam.\" \"Miriam,\nthis is Moses.\" Add seventy-five per cent to your present\nappreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not\nstick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you\nhated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have\nall the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.\n\n\nBE AGREEABLE.\n\nMake yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible,\nremembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood\nwill soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into\nthe battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on\npaths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through\nshadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the\njourney be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's\nknee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and\ngirlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell\nof exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as\nmuch as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse\nto them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall\nwelcome us home, as we say: \"Father and mother, we have come, and\nbrought our children with us.\" The old revival hymn described it with\nglorious repetition:\n\n    \"Brothers and sisters there will meet,\n    Brothers and sisters there will meet,\n    Brothers and sisters there will meet,\n      Will meet to part no more.\"\n\nI read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's\nhouse on a stormy night by some fascinating stories that were being\ntold him, and then looked out and saw it was so dark he did not dare\ngo home. The incident impressed me the more because in my childhood I\nhad much, the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with\nhim, but they dared not. It got later and later--seven o'clock, eight\no'clock, nine o'clock. \"Oh,\" he said, \"I wish I were home!\" As he\nopened the door the last time a blinding flash of the storm and a\ndeafening roar overcame him. But after a while he saw in the distance\na lantern, and lo! his brother was coming to fetch him home, and the\nlad stepped out and with swift feet hastened on to his brother who\ntook him home, where they were so glad to greet him, and for a long\ntime supper had been waiting. So may it be when the night of death\ncomes and our earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare not go\nalone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother, our Friend closer than a\nbrother, come out to meet us with the light of the promises, which\nshall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go in to join our\nloved ones waiting for us, supper all ready, the marriage supper of\nthe Lamb!\n\n\n\n\nTRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.\n\n    \"Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve\n    alone? bid her therefore that she help me.\"--LUKE 10:40.\n\n\nYonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead\nand his widow is taking charge of the premises. This is the widow\nMartha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household.\nThis is Mary, the youngest sister, with a book under her arm, and her\nface having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation. Company has\ncome. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good\ndeal of excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture is\nhastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are\nadjusted as well as, in so short a time, Mary and Martha can attend to\nthese matters.\n\n\nTHE WELCOME TO CHRIST.\n\nThey did not keep Christ standing at the door until they were newly\nappareled, or until they had elaborately arranged their tresses, then\ncoming out with their affected surprise as though they had not heard\nthe two or three previous knockings, saying: \"Why, is that you?\" No.\nThey were ladies, and were always presentable, although they may not\nhave always had on their best, for none of us always have on our best;\nif we did our best would not be worth having on. They throw open the\ndoor and greet Christ. They say: \"Good morning, Master; come in and be\nseated.\"\n\nChrist did not come alone; He had a group of friends with Him, and\nsuch an influx of city visitors would throw any country home into\nperturbation. I suppose also the walk from the city had been a good\nappetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important\ndepartment, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner greeted the guests\nthan she fled to that room. Mary had no anxiety about household\naffairs. She had full confidence that Martha could get up the best\ndinner in Bethany. She seems to say: \"Now, let us have a division of\nlabor. Martha, you cook and I'll sit down and be good.\"\n\n\nDIFFERENCE IN SISTERS.\n\nSo you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. There\nis Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive\nof some new pastry, or discovering something in the art of cooking and\nhousekeeping. There is Mary, also, fond of conversation, literary, so\nengaged in deep questions of ethics she has no time to attend to the\nquestions of household welfare. It is noon. Mary is in the parlor with\nChrist. Martha is in the kitchen. It would have been better if they\nhad divided the work, and then they could have divided the opportunity\nof listening to Jesus; but Mary monopolizes Christ, while Martha\nswelters at the fire.\n\n\nTROUBLE IN THE KITCHEN.\n\nIt was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that\nday. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious\nentertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a\nrepast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen.\nPerhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or\nMartha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only\nto have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting\nthe proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with\npitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the\nkitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: \"Lord, dost Thou not care\nthat my sister hath left me to serve alone?\"\n\nChrist scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have\nhis scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He\nknew Martha had almost worked herself to death to get Him something\nto eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as\nHe seems to say: \"My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit\ndown on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha,\nthou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is\nneedful.\" As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a\ngreat many household perplexities and anxieties.\n\n\nNON-APPRECIATION.\n\nFirst, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made\nMartha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her\nolder sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of\nthe store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange,\nthey say when they get home: \"Oh, you ought to be in our factory a\nlittle while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty\nsubordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!\"\nOh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a\nuniversity, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a\nlibrary, while she is health officer, police and president of her\nrealm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to\nkeep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed\nto the utmost.\n\nI know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit\nin an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and\nthrow off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and\ngreat experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household.\nThose are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great mass\nof housekeepers--the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at\nthirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look\nas though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were\nsixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and\nWaterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great\nArmageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see\nthat the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those\ntombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: \"Here\nlies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and\nscrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a\nbroom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle.\"\n\n\nA WEARING LIFE.\n\nYou think, O man of the world! that you have all the cares and\nanxieties. If the cares and anxieties of the household should come\nupon you for one week you would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale--I\nmean insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper arises in the\nmorning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable\nhour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not\ncome; what if the clock has stopped--no matter, she must have the\nmorning repast at an irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got\noff to school. What if their garments are torn; what if they do not\nknow their lessons; what if they have lost a hat or sash--they must be\nready. Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps of several\ndays, to plan; but what if the butcher has sent meat unmasticable, or\nthe grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, and what if some\npiece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or the\nroof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things\noccur--you must be ready.\n\nSpring weather comes, and there must be a revolution in the family\nwardrobe, or autumn comes, and you must shut out the northern blast;\nbut what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during\nthe year, the children have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if\nthe fashions have changed. Your house must be an apothecary's shop; it\nmust be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of\nailments--something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn,\nsomething to poultice the inflammation, something to silence the\njumping tooth, something to soothe the ear-ache. You must be in half a\ndozen places at the same time, or you must attempt to be.\n\n\nASSURED SYMPATHY.\n\nIf, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient\nrush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient. Oh,\nwoman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of\nothers in regard to your household toils let me assure you, from the\nkindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all\nyour work from garret to cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and\nHannah, and Abigail and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and\nHannah More is the God of the housekeeper.\n\nJesus was never married that he might be the especial friend and\nconfidante of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I blunder; Christ\nwas married. The Bible says that the Church is the Lamb's wife, and\nthat makes me know that all Christian women have a right to go to\nChrist and tell Him of their annoyances and troubles, since by His\noath of conjugal fidelity He is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert,\nthe Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this subject:\n\n    \"The servant by this clause\n      Makes drudgery divine;\n    Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,\n      Makes this and the action fine.\"\n\nAgain, there is the trial of\n\n\nSEVERE ECONOMY.\n\nNine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are\nsubjected to it--some under more and some under less stress of\ncircumstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and\ntake very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in\ndemanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of\nwomen--attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the\nbills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the\npresident, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a\npanic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices,\nthis perpetual study of economics, this life-long attempt to keep the\noutgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers.\n\n\nA PREPARATION.\n\nOh, my sister, this is a part of the divine discipline! If it were\nbest for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front\nwindows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked\nfifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of\nZarephath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as\nlong as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness--forty years.\nBeside that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the\ncontrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none\nof the nuisances of catering for appetites. And in the land of the\nwhite robe they never have to mend anything, and the air in that hill\ncountry makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man\nowns his own house, and a mansion at that.\n\nIt will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven\nif you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be\nso great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of\nlife if in this world you had a country-seat; but if you have walked\nwith tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount\ncelestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom,\noh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do\nexcept what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen\ncenturies! I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all\nthe thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes and the Hugh Latimers, and\nthe Theban Legion. Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be\nkept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a change from here to\nthere--from the time when they put down the rolling-pin to when they\ntake up the sceptre! If Chatsworth Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on\nFifth Avenue were to be lifted into the celestial city they would be\nconsidered uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus would be\nashamed to be seen going in and out of either of them.\n\n\nTHE TRIAL OF SICKNESS.\n\nThere are many housekeepers who could get along with their toils if it\nwere not for sickness and trouble. The fact is, one-half of the women\nof the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass, who has\nnever had an ache or pain, may consider household toil inconsiderable,\nand toward evening she may skip away miles to the fields and drive\nhome the cattle, and she may until ten o'clock at night fill the house\nwith laughing racket; but oh, to do the work of life with wornout\nconstitution, when whooping cough has been raging for six weeks in the\nhousehold, making the night as sleepless as the day--that is not so\neasy.\n\nPerhaps this comes after the nerves have been shattered by some\nbereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house, and\nset the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into\na slumber which needs no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for\nthe whole group a great deal better than she can for a part of the\ngroup now the rest are gone! Though you may tell her God is taking\ncare of those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood both flocks;\nand one wing she puts over the flock in the house, the other wing she\nputs over the flock in the grave.\n\nThere is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that\nwill take a woman through the trials of home life. At first there may\nbe a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage\nhour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more\nthan atoned by the joy of being together, and by the fact that when it\nis late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is\ntime to go! The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of\nanxiety and apprehension, are a matter of merriment--the loaf of bread\nturned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced\nor measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the\ncutlery and the mantel ornaments of a new home.\n\n\nTHE PROSE OF MATRIMONY.\n\nBut after a while the romance is all gone, and then there is something\nto be prepared for the table that the book called \"Cookery Taught in\nTwelve Lessons\" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a\nhandful of this, a cup of that and a spoonful of something else. It is\nnot something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavored with\nordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of\ndomestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and\nthe fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with\nthe new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home\ntrial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had a wretched\nhome. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and\nhe says, writing out of his own experience: \"Better is a dinner of\nherbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.\"\n\n\nGLORIOUS SELF-SACRIFICE.\n\nHow great are the responsibilities of housekeepers! Sometimes an\nindigestible article of food, by its effect upon a commander or king,\nhas defeated an army or over-thrown an empire. Housekeepers by the\nfood they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they\nintroduce, by the influences they bring around the home, are deciding\nthe physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race.\n\nYou say your life is one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters,\nthat is the only life worth living. That was Florence Nightingale's\nlife; that was Payson's life; that was Christ's life. We admire it in\nothers, but how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves. When in\nthis city young Dr. Hutchison, having spent a whole night in a\ndiphtheritic room for the relief of a patient, became saturated with\nthe poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to put garlands\non his grave; everybody appreciates that. When in the burning hotel at\nSt. Louis a young man on the fifth story broke open the door of the\nroom where his mother was sleeping, and plunged in amid smoke and\nfire, crying: \"Mother! where are you?\" and never came out, our hearts\napplauded that young man. But how few of us have the Christ-like\nspirit--a willingness to suffer for others!\n\n\nA BARBAROUS PEDAGOGUE.\n\nA rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half-starved lad, who\nhad offended against the laws of the school, and said: \"Take off your\ncoat directly, sir.\" The boy refused to take it off, whereupon the\nteacher said again: \"Take off your coat, sir,\" as he swung the whip\nthrough the air. The boy refused. It was not because he was afraid of\nthe lash--he was used to that at home--but it was from shame; he had\nno undergarment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his\ncoat there went a sob through the school. They saw then why he did not\nwant to remove his coat, and they saw the shoulder-blades had almost\ncut through the skin, and a stout, healthy boy rose up and went to the\nteacher of the school and said: \"Oh, sir, please don't hurt this poor\nfellow; whip me; see, he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt\nhim, he's poor; whip me.\" \"Well,\" said the teacher, \"it's going to be\na severe whipping; I am willing to take you as a substitute.\" \"Well,\"\nsaid the boy, \"I don't care; you whip me, if you will let this poor\nfellow go.\" The stout, healthy boy took the scourging without an\noutcry.[4] \"Bravo,\" says every man--\"Bravo!\" How many of us are\nwilling to take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and\nthe anxiety for other people! Beautiful thing to admire, but how\nlittle we have of that spirit! God give us that self-denying spirit,\nso that whether we are in humble spheres or in conspicuous spheres we\nmay perform our whole duty--for this struggle will soon be over.\n\n\nA CHRISTIAN HOUSEKEEPER.\n\nOne of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance\nof her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we\nwould come in from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I\nremember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the\nline of gray hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table\nand put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: \"Well, the fact\nis, I'm too tired to eat.\" Long after she might have delegated this\nduty to others she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the\nmatter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for\nsomehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in\nan express train, I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the\nwindow and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so\none of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped\nme on the shoulder and said: \"De Witt, I see you are looking out at\nthe scenes of your boyhood.\" \"Oh, yes,\" I replied, \"I was looking out\nat the old place where my mother lived and died.\"\n\nThat night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was\nthe country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children\non either side of the table, most of them gone never to come back. At\none end of the table my father, with a smile that never left his\ncountenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six\nyears' smile--not the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage\nand of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful,\nbenignant, hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She\nwas very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. \"Blessed\nare the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and\ntheir works do follow them.\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[4] It may be hoped that the savage who administered it received the\nattention of the Board of Education. A man so grossly unjust should be\nin the Penitentiary.\n\n\n\n\nWOMAN ENTHRONED.\n\n    \"There are threescore queens.\"--SOLOMON'S SONG 6:8.\n\n\nSo Solomon, by one stroke, sets forth the imperial character of a true\nChristian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a\nsubordinate, but a queen; and in my text Solomon sees sixty of these\nhelping to make up the royal pageant of Jesus. Crown and courtly\nattendants and imperial wardrobe are not necessary to make a queen,\nbut graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman.\nWoman's position is higher in the world than man's, and although she\nhas often been denied the right of suffrage, she always does vote, and\nalways will vote, by her influence, and her chief desire ought to be\nthat she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she\nhas already won. My chief anxiety is not that woman have other rights\naccorded her, but that she by the grace of God rise up to the\nappreciation of the glorious rights she already possesses. I shall\nenumerate some of those rights this morning.\n\nI. In the first place, woman has the special and superlative right of\nblessing and\n\n\nCOMFORTING THE SICK.\n\nWhat land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of\ndisease? Tens of thousands of sick-beds! What shall we do with them?\nShall man, with his rough hand and heavy foot and impatient bearing,\nminister? No. He cannot soothe the pain. He cannot quiet the nerves.\nHe knows not where to set the light. His hand is not steady enough to\npour out the drops. He is not wakeful enough to be watcher. The Lord\nGod, who sent Miss Dix into the Virginia hospitals, and Florence\nNightingale into the Crimea, and the Maid of Saragossa to appease the\nwounds of the battlefield, has equipped wife, mother, and daughter for\nthis delicate but tremendous mission.\n\nYou have known men who despised woman, but the moment disease fell\nupon them, they did not send for their friends at the bank, or their\npartner in business, or their worldly associates. Their first cry was,\n\"Take me to my wife.\" The dissipated young man at the college scoffs\nat the idea of being under home influences, but at the first blast of\nthe typhoid fever on his cheek he says,\n\n\n\"WHERE IS MOTHER?\"\n\nI think one of the most pathetic passages in all the Bible is the\ndescription of the lad who went out to the harvest-field of Shunem\nand got sun-struck, throwing his hands on his temples and crying out,\n\"Oh, my head! my head!\" and they said: \"Carry him to his mother.\" And\nthen the record is: \"He sat on her knees till noon, and then died.\" It\nis an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel, once in\na while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their\nmouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn\nyou in the bed! How loudly they talk! How you long for the ministries\nof home!\n\nI knew one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes for\nseveral weeks' business absence at the West. A telegram came at\nmidnight that he was on his death-bed, far away from home. By express\ntrain the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late. He\nfeared not to die; but he was in an agony to live until his family got\nthere. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while\nlonger. He said: \"I am willing to die, but not alone.\" But the pulses\nfluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped. The express trains\nmet in the midnight--wife and daughters going westward, lifeless\nremains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad,\npitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick we want to be sick\nat home. When the time comes for us to die,\n\n\nWE WANT TO DIE AT HOME.\n\nThe room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be\nvery plain; but who cares for that? Loving hands to bathe the temples;\nloving voices to speak good cheer; loving lips to read the comforting\npromises of Jesus. In the war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the\nmusketry; men cried to the hosts, \"Forward, march!\" men hurled their\nbattalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, \"Charge! charge!\"\nbut woman scraped the lint; woman administered the cordials; woman\nwatched by the dying couch; woman wrote the last message to the home\ncircle; woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and\nfour men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bands\nand triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be\nwritten anywhere, save in\n\n\nTHE CHRONICLES OF HEAVEN,\n\nof Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the\nChickahominy; of Annie Ross in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret\nBreckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds\nundressed, some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them\nover, those who had an arm left waved it, and filled the air with\ntheir \"hurrah!\"--of Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago with blankets\nand with pillows, until the men shouted: \"Three cheers for the\nChristian-Commission! God bless the women at home!\" then sitting down\nto take the last message: \"Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to\nmeet me in heaven; tell her to train up the boys whom we have loved so\nwell; tell her we shall meet again in the good land; tell her to bear\nmy loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier\"--and of Mrs.\nShelton, into whose face the convalescent soldier looked and said:\n\"Your grapes and cologne cured me.\"\n\nMen did their work with shot, and shell, and carbine, and howitzer;\n\n\nWOMEN DID THEIR WORK\n\nwith socks, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and Scripture\ntexts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that\nland where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded\nand said: \"On which side did you fight?\" Women knelt down over the\nwounded and said: \"Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for\nyou to eat? What makes you cry?\" To-night, while we men are sound\nasleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will\nbe groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in\nthat cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.\n\nII. Again, woman has a superlative right to take\n\n\nCARE OF THE POOR.\n\nThere are hundreds and thousands of them in all our cities. There is a\nkind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of\nlittle barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need\nto be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks\nwould know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a\ndress? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little\ngirl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new\npair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it\nfalls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so\nheavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather\nit. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and\nfinds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the\ndonation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps\nas she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust\nout two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to\nhave come down.\n\nO Christian young woman, if you would make yourself happy and win the\nblessing of Christ, go out\n\n\nAMONG THE DESTITUTE!\n\nA loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry;\nbut the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty\nwill give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, \"Look after that\nwoman; canopy her with your wings and shelter her from all harm;\" and\nwhile you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the\nlittle ones around the room will whisper, \"Who is she? Ain't she\nbeautiful?\" and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear\ndripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten\nstairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: \"Glory to God in the\nhighest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.\"\n\nCan you tell me why a Christian woman, going-down among\n\n\nTHE HAUNTS OF INIQUITY\n\non a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity? I stood in the\nchapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,\nin the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh; and I said to\nher, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place,\n\"Do you come here nights to hold a service?\" \"Oh yes,\" she said, \"I\ntake my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest\nand the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel;\nand then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them.\" I\nsaid, \"Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while\nperforming this Christian errand?\" \"Never,\" she said, \"never.\"\n\nThat young woman who has her father by her side walking down the\nstreet, and an armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as\nthat Christian woman who goes forth on gospel work into the haunts of\niniquity, carrying Bibles and bread. Some one said, \"I dislike very\nmuch to see that Christian woman teaching those bad boys\n\n\nIN THE MISSION SCHOOL;\n\nI am afraid to have her instruct them.\" \"So,\" said another man, \"I am\nafraid too.\" Said the first: \"I am afraid they will use vile language\nbefore they leave the place.\" \"Ah!\" said the other man, \"I am not\nafraid of that. What I am afraid of is that if any of those boys\nshould use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him\nto pieces and kill him on the spot.\"\n\n\nSOLICITATION OF CHARITIES.\n\nBacked up by barrels in which there is no flour, and by stoves in\nwhich there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no\nclothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to\nher, \"You go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money.\"\nShe goes in and gets it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She\ncould not help but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should get\nit. No need of your turning your back and pretending you don't hear;\nyou do hear. There is no need of your saying you are begged to death.\nThere is no need of your wasting your time, and you might as well\nsubmit first as last. You had better right away take down your\ncheque-book, mark the number of the cheque, fill up the blank, sign\nyour name, and hand it to her.\n\nThere is no need of wasting time. Those poor children on the back\nstreet have been hungry long enough. That sick man must have some\nfarina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I meet\nthis delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of such a\nhard-fisted man, and I say, \"Did you get the money?\" \"Of course,\" she\nsays, \"I got the money; that's what I went for. The Lord told me to go\nin and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand.\"\n\nIII. Again I have to tell you that it is woman's specific\n\n\nRIGHT TO COMFORT\n\nunder the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel;\nbut all profane as well as sacred history attests that, when the\ncrisis comes, she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency.\nHow often you have seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of\nfrivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to\na heroine. Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never\ntell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great\nloss to their store, or some of their companions in business play them\na sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is asked in the\nhousehold, again and again, \"What is the matter?\" but he believes it a\nsort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul.\nOh sir, your first duty was to\n\n\nTELL YOUR WIFE\n\nall about it. She perhaps might not have disentangled your finances or\nextended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear\nmisfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is\nintended for two.\n\nThere are business men here who know what I mean. There came a crisis\nin your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while\nthere came a day when you said, \"Here I shall have to stop,\" and you\ncalled in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in\nyour employ, and you said, \"We have got to stop.\" You left the store\nsuddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the\nstreet and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking\nat you, and blaming you, and denouncing you.\n\nYou hastened home. You told your wife all about the affair. What did\nshe say? Did she play the butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and\nthe ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She\nquailed not under the stroke. She helped you begin to plan right away.\nShe offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and\nwear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your\naffairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a\nthin, weak woman's arm holding you up; but while you looked at that\narm, there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the\neternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the\nbeautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten, twenty,\nor thirty years ago. You said, \"Well, this is the happiest day of my\nlife. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care--I\ndon't care.\"\n\nAt the moment you were utterly exhausted. God sent a Deborah to meet\nthe host of the Amalekites, and scatter them like chaff over the\nplain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels,\nand who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their\nChristian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if\nthey only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any\nsuch time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a\nThermopylae in your own household, where God will tell you to stand.\nThere are scores and hundreds of households in this city to-day where\nas much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by\nGrace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of Arc.\n\nIV. Again, I remark, it is woman's right to\n\n\nBRING TO US THE KINGDOM\n\nof heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man.\nWhy? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the\npleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she\ncan more easily become a Christian I prove by the statement that\nthree-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are\nwomen. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this\nworld back to God.\n\n\nTHE GREATEST SERMONS\n\nare not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an\naudience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent,\nconsecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of\nGod's truth.\n\nA group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on\ntoward morning--one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not\nmake any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened\nthe door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got\nhome. So they laid a wager. They said: \"Now, we'll go along with you.\nSo much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and\nmake such a demand she will resist it.\" So they went along at two or\nthree o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened,\nand the man said to his wife, \"Get us a supper.\" She said, \"What shall\nI get?\" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they\nprovided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down\nat the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian\nwife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all\nthis, broke into tears, and said: \"I can't stand this. Oh, what a\nwretch I am!\" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his\nChristian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his\nimmortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the\nfaith and hope of the Gospel.\n\nA patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of\ntransgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of\nobduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord\nAlmighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A\nsailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something\nhad happened, and the sailors cried, \"What's the matter?\" He said,\n\n\n\"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS\n\nhaunt me like a ghost.\" Home influences, consecrated Christian home\ninfluences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There\nare men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because\nthey were any better naturally than some other people, but because\nthere were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a\ngood start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a\nChristian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into\nAfrican jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so\nfar and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.\n\nI stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of\ntheir husbands in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an\noath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until\ndeath did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but\nafter that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal\nseparation? Is there any such thing as\n\n\nAN IMMORTAL MARRIAGE,\n\nmaking the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulchre brighter than\nthe garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma?\nYes; I stand here as a priest of the most high God to proclaim the\nbanns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace\nof Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son away from\nGod? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are\nprayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give,\nthere are examples for you to make; and I say now, this morning, as\nPaul said to the Corinthian woman: \"What knowest thou, O woman, but\nthou canst save thy husband?\"\n\nA man was dying, and he said to his wife: \"Rebecca, you wouldn't let\nme have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me\naway into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is\nsealed, and you are\n\n\nTHE CAUSE OF MY RUIN.\"\n\nO woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are\nthere not some here who have kindly influences at home--are there not\nsome here who have wandered far away from God, who can remember the\nChristian influences in their early home? Do not despise those\ninfluences, my brother. If you die without Christ, what will you do\nwith your mother's prayers, with your wife's importunities, with your\nsister's entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to\nwrite to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so\nkindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be but just one strand\nholding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like,\nthis morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach.\nFor the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of your mother's God,\nfor the sake of your daughter's God, for the sake of your sister's\nGod, come this day and be saved.\n\nV. Lastly, I wish to say that one of the specific rights of women is,\nthrough the grace of Christ, finally\n\n\nTO REACH HEAVEN.\n\nOh, what a multitude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ's mother, in\nheaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the\nmother of Augustine in heaven; the Countess of Huntingdon--who sold\nher splendid jewels to build chapels--in heaven; while a great many\nothers, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little,\nhave gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a\nchange it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the\nglass broken out, and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the \"house\nof many mansions!\" No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no\nmore thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show\nit was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for\naching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten\nframes. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering\nsteps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen,\nbitter curse.\n\nSome of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and\nstruggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your\ndoor fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But\nGod has a crown for you.\n\nI want you to realize, this morning, that He is now making it, and\nwhenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, whenever\nyou have a pang of body or soul He puts another gem in that crown,\nuntil, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for\nanother splendor, and God will say to His angel, \"The crown is done;\nlet her up that she may wear it.\" And as the Lord of Righteousness\nputs the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, \"Who is she?\"\nand Christ will say, \"I will tell you who she is. She is the one that\ncame up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made\nwhite in the blood of the Lamb.\"\n\n\nA BANQUET.\n\nAnd then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the\nprincipalities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will\nblush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God, and crimson\nwith the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and water from\nthe fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the\nold harpers of heaven will sit there making music with their harps;\nand Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying,\n\"She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified\ntogether.\" And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace,\nwill break forth with congratulation, \"Hail! hail!\" And there will be\nhandwritings on the wall--not such as struck the Persian noblemen with\nhorror, but fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light\nand love and victory: \"God hath wiped away all tears from all faces!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE OLD FOLKS' VISIT.\n\n    \"I will go and see him before I die.\"--GEN. 45:28.\n\n\nJacob had long since passed the hundred year mile-stone. In those\ntimes people were distinguished for longevity. In the centuries after\npersons lived to great age. Galen, the most celebrated physician of\nhis time, took so little of his own medicine, that he lived to one\nhundred and forty years. A man of undoubted veracity on the\nwitness-stand in England swore that he remembered an event one hundred\nand fifty years before. Lord Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut\nthree sets of teeth, and died at one hundred and forty years. Joseph\nCrele, of Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and forty years. In 1857 a\nbook was printed containing the names of thirty-seven person who lived\none hundred and forty years, and the names of eleven persons who lived\none hundred and fifty years.\n\nAmong the grand old people of whom we have record was Jacob, the\nshepherd of the text. But he had\n\n\nA BAD LOT OF BOYS.\n\nThey were jealous and ambitious and every way unprincipled. Joseph,\nhowever, seemed to be an exception; but he had been gone many years,\nand the probability was that he was dead. As sometimes now in a house\nyou will find kept at the table a vacant chair, a plate, a knife, a\nfork, for some deceased member of the family, so Jacob kept in his\nheart a place for his beloved Joseph. There sits the old man, the\nflock of one hundred and forty years in their flight having alighted\nlong enough to leave the marks of their claw on forehead and cheek and\ntemple. His long beard snows down over his chest. His eyes are\nsomewhat dim, and he can see further when they are closed than when\nthey are open, for he can see clear back into the time when beautiful\nRachel, his wife, was living, and his children shook the Oriental\nabode with their merriment.\n\nThe centenarian is sitting dreaming over the past when he hears a\nwagon rumbling to the front door. He gets up and goes to the door to\nsee who has arrived, and his long absent sons from Egypt come in and\nannounce to him that Joseph instead of being dead is living in an\nEgyptian palace, with all the investiture of prime minister, next to\nthe king in the mightiest empire of all the world!\n\n\nTHE NEWS WAS TOO SUDDEN\n\nand too glad for the old man, and his cheeks whiten, and he has a\ndazed look, and his staff falls out of his hand, and he would have\ndropped had not the sons caught him and led him to a lounge and put\ncold water on his face, and fanned him a little.\n\nIn that half delirium the old man mumbles something about his son\nJoseph. He says: \"You do not mean Joseph, do you? my dear son who has\nbeen dead so long. You don't mean Joseph, do you?\" But after they had\nfully resuscitated him, and the news was confirmed, the tears begin\nthe winding way down the cross roads of the wrinkles, and the sunken\nlips of the old man quiver, and he brings his bent fingers together as\nhe says: \"Joseph is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die.\"\n\nIt did not take the old man a great while to get ready, I warrant you.\nHe put on the best clothes that the shepherd's wardrobe could afford.\nHe got into the wagon, and though the aged are cautious and like to\nride slow, the wagon did not get along fast enough for this old man;\nand when the wagon with the old man met Joseph's chariot coming down\nto meet him, and Joseph got out of the chariot and got into the wagon\nand threw his arms around his father's neck, it was an antithesis of\n\n\nROYALTY AND RUSTICITY,\n\nof simplicity and pomp, of filial affection and paternal love, which\nleaves us so much in doubt about whether we had better laugh or cry,\nthat we do both. So Jacob kept the resolution of the text: \"I will go\nand see him before I die.\" And if our friends the reporters would like\nto have an appropriate title for this sermon, they might call it \"The\nOld Folks' Visit.\"\n\nWhat a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not\nalmost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers\nhad blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded,\noverflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the\nharvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of\nfamine had passed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is\noverwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped,\nthough pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired\nthe parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and\nnow they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the\nchildish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are\nfresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as\nfresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the\nboy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family\nrecord the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I\nsaid to my parents: \"What is this record, and what does it mean?\"\nTheir chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them\n\n\nA VERY TENDER SORROW.\n\nWhat does that all mean? Why, it means our children departed are ours\nyet, and that cord of attachment reaching across the years will hold\nus until it brings us together in the palace, as Jacob and Joseph were\nbrought together. That is one thing that makes old people die happy.\nThey realize it is reunion with those from whom they have long been\nseparated.\n\nI am often asked as pastor--and every pastor is asked the\nquestion--\"Will my children be\n\n\nCHILDREN IN HEAVEN,\n\nand forever children?\" Well, there was no doubt a great change in\nJoseph from the time Jacob lost him, and the time when Jacob found\nhim--between the boy seventeen years of age and the man in midlife,\nhis forehead developed with a great business estate; but Jacob was\nglad to get back Joseph anyhow, and it did not make much difference to\nthe old man whether the boy looked older, or looked younger. And it\nwill be enough joy for that parent if he can get back that son, that\ndaughter, at the gate of heaven, whether the departed loved one shall\ncome a cherub or in full-grown angelhood. There must be a change\nwrought by that celestial climate and by those supernal years, but it\nwill only be from loveliness to more loveliness, and from health to\nmore radiant health. O parent, as you think of the darling panting and\nwhite in membranous croup, I want you to know it will be gloriously\nbettered in that land where there has never been a death and where all\nthe inhabitants will live on in the great future as long as God!\nJoseph was Joseph notwithstanding the palace, and your child will be\nyour child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of everlasting\nnoon. What\n\n\nA THRILLING VISIT\n\nwas that of the old shepherd to the prime-minister Joseph! I see the\nold countryman seated in the palace looking around at the mirrors and\nthe fountains and the carved pillars, and oh! how he wishes that\nRachel, his wife, was alive and she could have come there with him to\nsee their son in his great house. \"Oh,\" says the old man within\nhimself, \"I do wish Rachel could be here to see all this!\" I visited\nat the farmhouse of the father of Millard Fillmore when the son was\nPresident of the United States, and the octogenerian farmer\nentertained me until eleven o'clock at night telling me what great\nthings he saw in his son's house at Washington, and what Daniel\nWebster said to him, and how grandly Millard treated his father in the\nWhite House. The old man's face was illumined with the story until\nalmost the midnight. He had just been visiting his son at the Capitol.\nAnd I suppose it was something of the same joy that thrilled the heart\nof the old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime-minister.\nIt is\n\n\nA GREAT DAY WITH YOU\n\nwhen your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand\naround with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so\nold. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little\nrestless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in\ntheir own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a\nbenediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and\nyou make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will\nprobably not visit you very often--perhaps never again. You go to\ntheir room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are\nproperly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better\nthan the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real\ninterest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.\nJoseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of\nhis father than you do of your parents. The probability is, before\nthey leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.\nGrandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your\nchildren than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation\nin the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!\n\nBlessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever\nmay have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a\npalace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two most\nmemorable visits will be the first and the last. Those two pictures\nwill hang in the hall of your memory while memory lasts, and you will\nremember just how they looked, and where they sat, and what they said,\nand at what figure of the carpet, and at what door-sill they parted\nwith you, giving you the final good-bye. Do not be embarrassed if your\nfather come to town and he have the manners of the shepherd, and if\nyour mother come to town and there be in her hat no sign of costly\nmillinery. The wife of Emperor Theodosius said a wise thing when she\nsaid: \"Husband, remember what you lately were, and remember what you\nare, and be thankful.\"\n\nBy this time you all notice what\n\n\nKINDLY PROVISION\n\nJoseph made for his father Jacob. Joseph did not say: \"I can't have\nthe old man around this place. How clumsy he would look climbing up\nthese marble stairs, and walking over these mosaics! Then, he would be\nputting his hands upon some of these frescoes. People would wonder\nwhere that old greenhorn came from. He would shock all the Egyptian\ncourt with his manners at table. Besides that, he might get sick on my\nhands, and he might be querulous, and he might talk to me as though I\nwere only a boy, when I am the second man in all the realm. Of course,\nhe must not suffer, and if there is famine in his country--and I hear\nthere is--I will send him some provisions; but I can't take a man from\nPadan-aram and introduce him into this polite Egyptian court. What a\nnuisance it is to have\n\n\nPOOR RELATIONS!\"\n\nJoseph did not say that, but he rushed out to meet his father with\nperfect abandon of affection, and brought him up to the palace, and\nintroduced him to the Emperor, and provided for all the rest of the\nfather's days, and nothing was too good for the old man while living;\nand when he was dead Joseph, with military escort, took his father's\nremains to the family cemetery at Machpelah and put them down beside\nRachel, Joseph's mother. Would God all children were as kind to their\nparents!\n\nIf the father have large property, and he be wise enough to keep it in\nhis own name, he will be respected by the heirs; but how often it is\nwhen the son finds the father in famine, as Joseph found Jacob in\nfamine, the young people make it very hard for the old man. They are\nso surprised he eats with a knife instead of a fork. They are\nchagrined at his antediluvian habits. They are provoked because he\ncannot hear as well as he used to, and when he asks it over again, and\nthe son has to repeat it, he bawls in the old man's ear: \"I hope you\nhear that!\" How long he must wear the old coat or the old hat before\nthey get him a new one! How chagrined they are at his independence of\nthe English grammar! How long he hangs on! Seventy years and not gone\nyet! Seventy-five years and not gone yet! Eighty years and not gone\nyet! Will he ever go? They think it of no use to have a doctor in his\nlast sickness, and go up to the drugstore and get a dose of something\nthat makes him worse, and economize on a coffin, and beat the\nundertaker down to the last point, giving a note for the reduced\namount which they never pay! I have officiated at obsequies of aged\npeople where the family have been so inordinately resigned to the\nProvidence that I felt like taking my text from Proverbs: \"The eye\nthat mocketh at its father, and refuseth to obey its mother, the\nravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat\nit.\" In other words, such an ingrate ought to have a flock of crows\nfor pall-bearers! I congratulate you if you have the honor of\nproviding for aged parents. The blessing of the Lord God of Joseph and\nJacob will be on you.\n\nI rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the\nmost of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of\na son who had achieved a fortune. There the octogenarian sat, and the\nservants waited on him, and there were plenty of horses and plenty of\ncarriages to convey him, and a bower in which to sit on long summer\nafternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the\nhouse where he was not welcome, and there were musical instruments of\nall sorts to regale him; and when life had passed, the neighbors came\nout and expressed all honor possible, and carried him to the village\nMachpelah and put him down beside the Rachel with whom he had lived\nmore than half a century.\n\n\nSHARE YOUR SUCCESSES\n\nwith the old people. The probability is, that the principles they\ninculcated achieved your fortune. Give them a Christian percentage of\nkindly consideration. Let Joseph divide with Jacob the pasture fields\nof Goshen and the glories of the Egyptian court.\n\nAnd here I would like to sing the praises of the sisterhood who\nremained unmarried that they might administer to aged parents. The\nbrutal world calls these\n\n\nSELF-SACRIFICING ONES\n\nby ungallant names, and says they are peculiar or angular; but if you\nhad had as many annoyances as they have had, Xantippe would have been\nan angel compared with you. It is easier to take care of five\nrollicking, romping children than of one childish old man. Among the\nbest women of Brooklyn and of yonder transpontine city are those who\nallowed the bloom of life to pass away while they were caring for\ntheir parents. While other maidens were sound asleep, they were\nsoaking the old man's feet or tucking up the covers around the invalid\nmother. While other maidens were in the cotillon, they were dancing\nattendance upon rheumatism and spreading plasters for the lame back of\nthe septuagenarian, and heating catnip tea for insomnia.\n\nIn almost every circle of our kindred there has been some\n\n\nQUEEN OF SELF-SACRIFICE\n\nto whom jeweled hand after jeweled hand was offered in marriage, but\nwho stayed on the old place because of the sense of filial obligation\nuntil the health was gone and the attractiveness of personal presence\nhad vanished. Brutal society may call such a one by a nickname. God\ncalls her daughter, and Heaven calls her saint, and I call her\ndomestic martyr. A half dozen ordinary women have not as much nobility\nas could be found in the smallest joint of the little finger of her\nleft hand. Although the world has stood six thousand years, this is\nthe first apotheosis of maidenhood, although in the long line of those\nwho have declined marriage that they might be qualified for some\nespecial mission are the names of Anna Ross, and Margaret\nBreckinridge, and Mary Shelton, and Anna Etheridge, and Georgiana\nWilletts, the angels of the battlefields of Fair Oaks, and Lookout\nMountain, and Chancellorsville, and Cooper Shop Hospital: and though\nsingle life has been honored by the fact that the three grandest men\nof the Bible--John and Paul and Christ--were\n\n\nCELIBATES.\n\nLet the ungrateful world sneer at the maiden aunt, but God has a\nthrone burnished for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in\nheaven there is a vase containing two jewels, the one brighter than\nthe Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any diamond\never found in the districts of Golconda--the one jewel by the lapidary\nof the palace cut with the words: \"Inasmuch as ye did it to father;\"\nthe other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words:\n\"Inasmuch as ye did it to mother.\" \"Over the Hills to the Poorhouse\"\nis the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton, who found an old woman who\nhad been turned off by her prospered sons; but I thank God I may find\nin my text \"Over the hills to the palace.\"\n\nAs if to disgust us with unfilial conduct, the Bible presents us the\nstory of Micah, who stole the eleven hundred shekels from his mother,\nand the story of Absalom, who tried to dethrone his father. But all\nhistory is beautiful with stories of filial fidelity. Epaminondas, the\nwarrior, found his chief delight in reciting to his parents his\nvictories. There goes AEneas from burning Troy, on his shoulders\nAnchises, his father. The Athenians punished with death any unfilial\nconduct. There goes beautiful Ruth escorting venerable Naomi across\nthe desert amid the howling of the wolves and the barking of the\njackals. John Lawrence burned at the stake in Colchester, was cheered\nin the flames by his children, who said: \"O God, strengthen thy\nservant and keep thy promise!\" And Christ in the hour of excruciation\nprovided for His old mother. Jacob kept his resolution, \"I will go and\nsee him before I die,\" and a little while after we find them walking\nthe tessellated floor of the palace, Jacob and Joseph, the\nprime-minister proud of the shepherd.\n\nI may say in regard to the most of you that your parents have probably\nvisited you for the last time, or will soon pay you such a visit, and\nI have wondered if they will ever visit you\n\n\nIN THE KING'S PALACE.\n\n\"Oh,\" you say, \"I am in the pit of sin!\" Joseph was in the pit. \"Oh,\"\nyou say, \"I am in the prison of mine iniquity!\" Joseph was once in\nprison. \"Oh,\" you say, \"I didn't have a fair chance; I was denied\nmaternal kindness!\" Joseph was denied maternal attendance. \"Oh,\" you\nsay, \"I am far away from the land of my nativity!\" Joseph was far from\nhome. \"Oh,\" you say, \"I have been betrayed and exasperated!\" Did not\nJoseph's brethren sell him to a passing Ishmaelitish caravan? Yet God\nbrought him to that emblazoned residence; and if you will trust His\ngrace in Jesus Christ you, too, will be empalaced. Oh, what a day that\nwill be when the old folks come from an adjoining mansion in heaven,\nand find you amid the alabaster pillars of the throne-room and living\nwith the king! They are coming up the steps now, and the epauletted\nguard of the palace rushes in and says: \"Your father's coming, your\nmother's coming!\" And when under the arches of precious stones and on\nthe pavement of porphyry you greet each other, the scene will eclipse\nthe meeting on the Goshen highway, when Joseph and Jacob fell on each\nother's neck and wept a good while.\n\nBut oh, how changed the old folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into\nthe flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into\nimmortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the\nsprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: \"A spirit\npassed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and\ndissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer\nhas been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on\nearth before we died, now we visit you in your new home after our\nascension.\" And father will say, \"Mother, don't you see Joseph is yet\nalive?\" and mother will say, \"Yes, father, Joseph is yet alive.\" And\nthen they will talk over their earthly anxieties in regard to you, and\nthe midnight supplications in your behalf, and they will recite to\neach other the old Scripture passage with which they used to cheer\ntheir staggering faith: \"I will be a God to thee and thy seed after\nthee.\" Oh, the palace, the palace, the palace! That is what Richard\nBaxter called \"The Saints' Everlasting Rest.\" That is what John Bunyan\ncalled the \"Celestial City.\" That is Young's \"Night Thoughts\" turned\ninto morning exultations. That is Gray's \"Elegy in a Churchyard\"\nturned to resurrection spectacle. That is the \"Cotter's Saturday\nNight\" exchanged for the Cotter's Sabbath morning. That is the\nshepherd of Salisbury Plain amid the flocks on the hills of heaven.\nThat is the famine-struck Padan-aram turned into the rich pasture\nfields of Goshen. That is Jacob visiting Joseph at the emerald\ncastle.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DOMESTIC CIRCLE.\n\n    \"Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord\n    hath done for thee.\"--MARK 5:19.\n\n\nThere are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which\nto serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish\nthat they had some such great opportunity in which to display their\nChristian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they\nonly wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach\nrighteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; all they want is only\nan opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now the evangelist\ncomes to us, and he practically says: \"I will show you a place where\nyou can exhibit all that is grand, and beautiful, and glorious in\nChristian character, and that is the domestic circle.\"\n\n\nEVERY MAN'S OPPORTUNITY.\n\nIf one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere he will not be\nfaithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at\nthe gate of the temple, he will never be able to preach three thousand\nsouls into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will not take pains\nto instruct in the way of salvation the jailor of the Philippian\ndungeon, he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not faithful in a\nskirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is we are\nall placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve\nGod; and we ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of\nusefulness which we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing\nquestion with you and with me ought to be: \"Lord, what wilt thou have\nme now and here to do?\"\n\n\nWHAT A HOME IS.\n\nThere is one word in my text around which the most of our thoughts\nwill this morning revolve. That word is \"Home.\" Ask ten different men\nthe meaning of that word, and they will give you ten different\ndefinitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at\nthe table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books,\ndevotion at the altar. To him it means a greeting at the door and a\nsmile at the chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping its hands\nwith laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the ripples sleep the\nshadows.\n\nAsk another man what home is, and he will tell you it is want, looking\nout of a cheerless firegrate, kneading hunger in an empty bread tray.\nThe damp air shivering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children\nrobbers and murderers in embryo. Obscene songs their lullaby. Every\nface a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from\nthe front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that door-sill. Vestibule of\nthe pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forging everlasting\nchains. Faggots for an unending funeral pile. Awful word! It is\nspelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats\nwith the death agony of despair.\n\nThe word \"Home\" in the one case means everything bright. The word\n\"Home\" in the other case means everything terrific.\n\nI shall speak to you this morning of home as a test of character, home\nas a refuge, home as a political safeguard, home as a school, and home\nas a type of heaven.\n\nAnd in the first place I remark, that home is a powerful test of\ncharacter. The disposition in public may be in gay costume, while in\nprivate it is in dishabille. As play actors may appear in one way on\nthe stage, and may appear in another way behind the scenes, so private\ncharacter may be very different from public character. Private\ncharacter is often public character turned wrong side out. A man may\nreceive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of\nsmiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are\nbusiness men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and\ngood-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and\ntheir petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam\nbreaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets.\n\n\nHOME MANNERS.\n\nReputation is only the shadow of character, and a very small house\nsometimes will cast a very long shadow. The lips may seem to drop with\nmyrrh and cassia, and the disposition to be as bright and warm as a\nsheaf of sunbeams, and yet they may only be a magnificent show window\nto a wretched stock of goods. There is many a man who is affable in\npublic life and amid commercial spheres who, in a cowardly way, takes\nhis anger and his petulance home, and drops them on the domestic\ncircle.\n\nThe reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because\nthey do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their\npetulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do\nnot let their notes go to protest. It does not pay. Or for the same\nreason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his\nstock at less than the right price, lest it depreciate the value. As\nat some time the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a\ntempestuous night. There are people who in public act the\nphilanthropist, who at home act the Nero, with respect to their\nslippers and their gown.\n\n\nAUDUBON'S GREATNESS.\n\nAudubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through\nthe forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful\nbirds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript,\nand put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and\nrest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the\nmanuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad\ntemper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all\nthe great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And\nyet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are\nutterly unreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of\nraiment will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm.\n\nNow, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private\nis making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank\nthat might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in\ncirculation with no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at\nhome. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have\nnot genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public\nplausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the\nslimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a\nmighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere,\nwhether you demonstrate it or not.\n\n\nHOME A REFUGE.\n\nAgain, I remark that home is a refuge. Life is the United States army\non the national road to Mexico, a long march, with ever and anon a\nskirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack the\narms, we hang up the war cap and lay our head on the knapsack, we\nsleep until the morning bugle calls us to marching and action. How\npleasant it is to rehearse the victories and the surprises, and the\nattacks of the day, seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle!\n\nYea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts, and torn sails, and\nhulk aleak, we put in at the harbor of home. Blessed harbor! There we\ngo for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The candle in the window\nis to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children\ngo forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the \"Narrows\" take the\nhand of ships. The door-sill of the home is the wharf where heavy\nlife is unladen.\n\nThere is the place where we may talk of what we have done without\nbeing charged with self adulation. There is the place where we may\nlounge without being thought ungraceful. There is the place where we\nmay express affection without being thought silly. There is the place\nwhere we may forget our annoyances, and exasperations, and troubles.\nForlorn earth pilgrim! no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is\nbrighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent\nfor marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest\nfrom this scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain. God pity the\nman or the woman who has no home!\n\n\nA POLITICAL SAFEGUARD.\n\nFurther, I remark that home is a political safeguard. The safety of\nthe State must be built on the safety of the home. Why cannot France\ncome to a placid republic? Ever and anon there is a threat of national\ncapsize. France as a nation has not the right kind of a Christian\nhome. The Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for a\nrepublic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute\nnecessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to\nmake the family adhere, there will not be enough political principle\nto make the State adhere. \"No home\" means the Goths and Vandals, means\nthe Nomads of Asia, means the Numideans of Africa, changing from place\nto place, according as the pasture happens to change. Confounded be\nall those Babels of iniquity which would overtower and destroy the\nhome. The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails\nwill sink the frigate of the constitution. Jails and penitentiaries\nand armies and navies are not our best defence. The door of the home\nis the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and\nthe chimneys of our dwelling houses are the grandest monuments of\nsafety and triumph. No home; no republic.\n\n\nAS A SCHOOL.\n\nFurther, I remark, that home is a school. Old ground must be turned up\nwith subsoil plough, and it must be harrowed and re-harrowed, and then\nthe crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less\nculture. Now youth and childhood are new ground, and all the\ninfluences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after life\nluxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approbation, all the\ngood cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your\nchildren. And every ebullition of anger and every uncontrollable\ndisplay of indignation will be fuel to their disposition twenty, or\nthirty, or forty years from now--fuel for a bad fire a quarter of a\ncentury from this.\n\nYou praise the intelligence of your child too much sometimes when you\nthink he is not aware of it, and you will see the result of it before\nten years of age in his annoying affectations. You praise his beauty,\nsupposing he is not large enough to understand what you say, and you\nwill find him standing on a high chair before a flattering mirror.\nWords and deeds and example are the seed of character, and children\nare very apt to be the second edition of their parents. Abraham begat\nIsaac, so virtue is apt to go down in the ancestral line; but Herod\nbegat Archelaus, so iniquity is transmitted. What vast responsibility\ncomes upon parents in view of this subject!\n\nOh, make your home the brightest place on earth, if you would charm\nyour children to the high path of virtue, and rectitude, and religion!\nDo not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts\ngold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do\nnot expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover\nup your walls with such pictures as West's \"Death on a Pale Horse,\" or\nTintoretto's \"Massacre of the Innocents.\" Rather cover them, if you\nhave pictures, with \"The Hawking Party,\" and \"The Mill by the Mountain\nStream,\" and \"The Fox Hunt,\" and \"The Children Amid Flowers,\" and\n\"The Harvest Scene,\" and \"The Saturday Night Marketing.\"\n\n\nCHEERFUL HOMES.\n\nGet you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's\nfrisk, and quail's whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the\nrock at the mountain-top clear down to the meadow ferns under the\nshadow of the steep, comes looking for the steepest place to leap off\nat, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled\nwith tempest and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every\nmountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam,\nand there were nothing but simooms blowing among the hills, and there\nwere neither lark's carol nor humming bird's trill, nor waterfall's\ndash, but only a bear's bark, and panther's scream, and wolf's howl,\nthen you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when\nGod has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with\ngladness, let us take into our home circle all innocent hilarity, all\nbrightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad\ngirls in preparation for bad men and bad women.\n\nAbove all, my friends, take into your homes Christian principle. Can\nit be that in any of the comfortable homes of my congregation the\nvoice of prayer is never lifted? What! No supplication at night for\nprotection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care? How, my\nbrother, my sister, will you answer God in the Day of Judgment, with\nreference to your children? It is a plain question and therefore I ask\nit. In the tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour out His\nfury upon the families that call not upon His name. O parents! when\nyou are dead and gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of the\ntombstones will your children look back and think of father and mother\nat family prayer? Will they take the old family Bible and open it and\nsee the mark of tears of contrition and tears of consoling promise\nwept by eyes long before gone out into darkness?\n\n\nCHILDREN'S CURSES.\n\nOh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle in the hearts of your\nchildren, and you do not warn them against evil, and you do not invite\nthem to holiness and to God, and they wander on into dissipation and\ninto infidelity, and at last make shipwreck of their immortal soul, on\ntheir deathbed and in their Day of Judgment they will curse you!\nSeated by the register or the stove, what if on the wall should come\nout the history of your children? What a history--the mortal and\nimmortal life of your loved ones! Every parent is writing the history\nof his child. He is writing it, composing it into a song, or turning\nit into a groan.\n\nMy mind runs back to one of the best of early homes. Prayer, like a\nroof, over it. Peace, like an atmosphere, in it. Parents,\npersonifications of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The two\npillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. But shall I\never forget that early home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun that\nwarms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets the star that guided him. Yes,\nwhen love has gone out on the heart's altar and memory has emptied its\nurn into forgetfulness. Then, the home of my childhood, I will forget\nthee! The family altar of a father's importunity and a mother's\ntenderness, the voices of affection, the funerals of our dead father\nand mother with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees\nmaking a perpetual arbor of love, and peace, and kindness--then I will\nforget them--then and only then. You know, my brother, that a hundred\ntimes you have been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I\nhave been describing. You have often had raging temptations, but you\nknow what has held you with supernatural grasp. I tell you a man who\nhas had such a good home as that never gets over it, and a man who has\nhad a bad early home never gets over it.\n\nAgain, I remark, that home is a type of heaven. To bring us to that\nhome Christ left His home. Far up and far back in the history of\nheaven there came a period when its most illustrious citizen was about\nto absent Himself. He was not going to sail from beach to beach; we\nhave often done that. He was not going to put out from one hemisphere\nto another hemisphere; many of us have done that. But he was to sail\nfrom world to world, the spaces unexplored and the immensities\nuntraveled. No world had ever hailed heaven, and so far as we know\nheaven had never hailed any other world. I think that the windows and\nthe balconies were thronged, and that the pearline beach was crowded\nwith those who had come to see Him sail out the harbor of light into\nthe oceans beyond.\n\n\nTHE EXILE.\n\nOut, and out, and out, and on, and on, and on, and down, and down, and\ndown He sped, until one night, with only one to greet Him, He arrived.\nHis disembarkation so unpretending, so quiet, that it was not known on\nearth until the excitement in the cloud gave intimation that something\ngrand and glorious had happened. Who comes there? From what port did\nHe sail? Why was this the place of His destination? I question the\nshepherds, I question the camel drivers, I question the angels. I have\nfound out. He was an exile. But the world has had plenty of\nexiles--Abraham an exile from Ur of the Chaldees; John an exile from\nEphesus; Kosciusko an exile from Poland; Mazzini an exile from Rome;\nEmmett an exile from Ireland; Victor Hugo an exile from France;\nKossuth an exile from Hungary. But this one of whom I speak to-day had\nsuch resounding farewell and came into such chilling reception--for\nnot even an hostler came out with his lantern to help Him in--that He\nis more to be celebrated than any other expatriated one of earth or\nheaven.\n\n\nHOMESICKNESS.\n\nIt is ninety-five million miles from here to the sun, and all\nastronomers agree in saying that our solar system is only one of the\nsmall wheels of the great machinery of the universe, turning round\nsome one great centre, the centre so far distant it is beyond all\nimagination and calculation; and if, as some think, that great centre\nin the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when He came\nhere. Have you ever thought of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you\nknow what homesickness is, when you have been only a few weeks absent\nfrom the domestic circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from\nhome. Some of you feel homesickness when you are a hundred or a\nthousand miles away from the domestic circle. Christ was more\nmillions of miles away from home than you could calculate if all your\nlife you did nothing but calculate. You know what it is to be homesick\neven amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts, and He\nwas athirst, and He was ahungered, and He was on the way from being\nborn in another man's barn to being buried in another man's grave. I\nhave read how the Swiss, when they are far away from their native\ncountry, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they\nfall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.\nBut oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial\nriches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!\nHomesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out\nof the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that\nhomesickness suffered to get us home!\n\n\nTHE HOME-GATHERING.\n\nAt our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. \"Heaven is\nour home.\" Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in\nall that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in\nholiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed\nthat there is almost always a son or a daughter absent--absent from\nhome, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.\nOh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children\nhome with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers\nand sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the\ndoor of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they\nsaw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,\nincorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and\nsorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they\npassed through dry shod.\n\nGates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not\nstir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly\nsorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and\nempires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be\nburied amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let\neverlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no\ncrying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful\nhome, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.\n\n\nA DREAM.\n\nOne night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around\nabout me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter--on the lounge, half\nawake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.\nIt was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the\ncities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical\nfruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than\nItalian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for\nthorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I\nsaw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I\nsaw the people in holiday attire, and I said: \"When will they put off\nthis and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter\nat the forge?\" but they never put off the holiday attire.\n\nAnd I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the\ndead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills,\nthe place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers\nand castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I\nsee. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: \"Where\ndo the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they\nsit?\" And the answer was made me:\n\n\n\"WE HAVE NO POOR\n\nin this country.\" And then I wandered out to find the hovels of the\ndestitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a\ntear could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was bewildered, and I\nsat down under the branches of a great tree, and I said: \"Where am I?\nAnd whence comes all this scene?\"\n\nAnd then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and\nacross the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all\nabout me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as\nthey shouted I thought I knew their voices; but then they were so\ngloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed\nthat I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped\ntheir hands and shouted \"Welcome, welcome!\" the mystery all vanished,\nand I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all\ntogether again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around, and I\nsaid; \"Are we all here?\" and the voices of many generations responded\n\"All here!\" And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks,\nand the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and\nthe towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all\ntogether began to leap and shout and sing: \"Home, home, home, home!\"\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |\n    |                                                           |\n    | Page  65: 'it' replaced with 'if' in the sentence         |\n    |             \"and if you should strike him...\"             |\n    | Page 103: seciety replaced with society                   |\n    | Page 193: Christion replaced with Christian               |\n    | Page 209: beqeath replaced with bequeath                  |\n    | Page 209: wordliness replaced for worldliness             |\n    | Page 276: couse replaced with course                      |\n    |                                                           |\n    +-----------------------------------------------------------+\n\n       *       *       *       *       *","title":"The Wedding Ring: A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those Contemplating Matrimony","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":70015}