The Maker and the Breaker of a Family's Peace
* Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house.” — xv. 16, 17, 27.
“Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.” — xvii. 1.
[HESE are blessed words in a world of strife. They are welcome as a well of water springing in the desert. They drop on weary hearts like rain on the mown grass. The gift is good: we receive it with gladness, and thank the Giver.
The constitution of man and the law of God are fitted into each other, like lock and key. The capability of the subject corresponds to the rule which the Sovereign enacts. When the creature falls in with the Creator’s will, all the machinery moves smoothly: when the creature resists, it stands still or is riven asunder. Truth sweetens the relations of life; falsehood eats like rust into their core. When they live in love, men meet each other softly and kindly, as the eyelids meet; envy casts grains of sand between the two, and under each. Every movement then sends a shooting pain through all the body, and makes the salt tears flow. So good are peace and love for human-kind, that with them a family will be happy though they have nothing else in the world; and without them miserable, although they have the whole world at their command.
No creature can with impunity break any of the Creator’s laws. He is not a man, that he should fail to detect or punish the transgressor. He depends not on the activity of police, or the speed of the telegraph. Sin follows the sinner, and finds him out, and inflicts the punishment. Sorrow comes on the heels of sin, as the echo answers to a sound, as the rebound answers to a blow. Let a family have abundant wealth, and all the luxuries that wealth can buy, — a commodious house and a sumptuous table, broad lands and a troop of attendants, — yet if strife enters the circle, it will act like leaven in the mass, and imbitter all their enjoyments. Being under law to God they cannot escape. When they sin they suffer. Strife makes them more miserable amidst all their wealth than a loving family who have not wherewith to buy to-morrow’s food.
A dinner of herbs and a stalled ox indicate the two extremes, — humble poverty on the one side, and pampered luxury on the other. These brief expressions open for a moment the doors of the cottage and of the palace that we may obtain a glimpse of what is going on within. Look into the dwelling on this side: it is dinner time: the family, fresh from their labour, are seated round a clean uncovered table; there is no meat from the stall or the flock, no bunch of ripe grapes from the vine-yard, and even no bread from the corn-field. Some green herbs gathered in the garden have been cooked and set down as the meal of the household. The fare is poor; but this poor fare and love together, make a more savoury mess than any that ever graced a royal banquet: the people thrive upon the precious mixture. Look into the lofty castle on the other side at the moment when this word throws open its doors. A rich feast is reeking in the hall The stalled ox is there, surrounded by a labyrinth of kindred luxuries. A crowd of attendants must be in the room, observing every look, and hearing every whisper. The poor man’s family dine in private; the rich man’s in public. This is one point in favour of the poor. The servant at his master’s back is a man with human feelings in his breast. If he has been treated unkindly, anger rankles in his heart, while the smile that is paid for plays upon his countenance. If, moreover, there be jealousy between husband and wife, rivalry between brother and brother, in this great house, their meeting at a meal is misery; their politeness before strangers is the incrusted whitewash on a sepulchre’s side, cracking and falling off at every movement, and revealing the rottenness within. When love leaves the family circle, it is no longer a piece of God’s own hand-work, and there is no security for safety in any of its motions. Love is the element in which all its relations were set, for softness and safety; and when it has evaporated, nothing remains but that each member of the house should be occupied in mounting a miserable guard over his own interests, and against the anticipated contact of the rest. In that dislocated house each dreads all, and all dread each. The only distinction remaining is, that the one who is nearest you hurts you the most.
But mark well, it is neither said in the Bible nor found in experience that they are all happy families who dine on herbs, and all unhappy who can afford to feast on a stalled ox. Some rich families live in love, and doubly enjoy their abundance; some poor families quarrel over their herbs. Riches cannot secure happiness, and poverty cannot destroy it. But such is the power of love, that with it you will be happy in the meanest estate; without it, miserable in the highest. Would you know the beginning, the middle, and the end of this matter, — the spring on high, the stream flowing through the channel of the covenant, and the fruitful outspread in a disciple’s life below, — they are all here, and all one, — Charity: “GOD is LOVE;” “Love is of God;’ “Walk in love.”
In this book the greed of gain stands side by side with strife, as the twin troubler of a house. As a husbandman looks on a prevailing weed that infests his garden, as a shepherd looks on a wolf that ravages his flock, so our Father in heaven looks on that love of money which grievously mars the harmony of his own institute, the family. That instrument of torture points both ways. The miser, as we know by his name, is a torment to himself: he is also a thorn in the flesh of those who are nearest to him. Perhaps in our community, and in our day, more families are troubled by a lavish expenditure, than by an undue hoarding of money; but the prevalence of one evil does not make another evil good. Dealing with one thing at a time, the words give out a certain sound, — that if a man be himself a miser, he makes his house miserable. When God has given a man one of his choicest blessings, a family; and given him, too, means sufficient for their support; if the man intercept the flow of the Creator’s bounty, and hoard that which was given for use, he displeases the Giver, and injures the gift, as surely as if he should impiously arrest the flow of the blood from its central reservoir, and prevent it from circulating through the frame. The hoarded blood would clot and stagnate and corrupt: while the body, for want of it, would pine away. The benefit of its circulation would be lost, and its accumulation in one place would become an encumbrance dangerous to life. Thus the man troubles his house who diverts the children’s daily portion into the miser’s corrupting hoard.
In my earliest years, as far back on the line of life as memory’s vision can distinctly reach, the nearest neighbour of our house on the right, was an old farmer, very religious, and very rich. He had three sons and seven daughters. Instead of employing the increase of his fields to elevate the condition and enlarge the minds of his numerous, winsome, and well-conditioned family, he left them to nature, and laid up his money in the bank. The sons and daughters all married in succession, and left him. Thereafter, at the age of seventy-three, he married a servant-girl of exactly the same age as his youngest daughter. The match supplied the young people of the district with merriment for many months. The young woman wrought upon the old man’s failing faculties, and, in order to secure the money for herself, persuaded him that all his children were banded in a conspiracy against his life. He made his will under this impression, bequeathing the bulk of his fortune to his wife; and, with a refinement of cruelty which was certainly not his own invention, devised small sums to each of his sons and daughters, — to one five pounds, to another ten, to each a different amount, reaching at the highest the sum of twenty-five pounds. The sums were made to vary with the varying shades of the children’s guilt, as they were marked on the imagination of the imbecile parent. The old man died. The widow enjoyed her legacy unchallenged. But the daughters who had got the smaller sums went to law with their sisters who had obtained the larger sums, in order to have them equalized. After these miserable pittances had served to rend a whole family asunder in hopeless feuds, the worthless money itself was lost in law. The God of providence taught me early, as they teach children now in schools, by a picture, that “he who is greedy of gain troubleth his own house.”
But the teaching was still more specific and guarded and fatherly than this; at the same time the other lesson was exhibited with equal vividness on the other side. Our nearest neighbour on the left — in this case half a mile distant, and in the former case a quarter — was another old man, very religious and very drunken. He had a light rent, a long lease, and an indulgent landlord. Plenty of money passed through his hands, but none ever remained in them. He was not greedy of gain, and yet he troubled his own house. His spendthrift and intemperate life, aggravated by his religious profession,4 told with fearful effect upon a band of stately and intelligent sons. They were all clever, but all made shipwreck.
At this advanced period of my life I think still with interest and awe on the sovereign providence that placed me, while yet a child, in that middle space between two evils, opposite, yet equal, and in full sight of both. The lessons were given not in the thin profile of a single line, but in the full breadth and varied features of large family groups. The examples did not glance into sight and out again like visions of the night: they remained in view for a long series of years. I saw the beginning, and I have lived to witness the end. In my childhood they were sowing the seed beside me, and in manhood I saw them reaping in tears. When God gave the law to Moses, it was accompanied by the precise and significant intimation, “I have written that thou mayest teach.” The same Lord continues writing still on the ileshy tables of human hearts, and on the same condition — that the lesson so engraved should not be a talent hid in a napkin, but published for the benefit of all whom it may concern. These lines, written by the Lord’s own hand in the workings of providence, lie in sharpest outline in the lower strata of my memory, and are fixed like fossils in the rock: the tide of city life rushing over them during many successive years, instead of defacing the letters, seems only to make the matrix more transparent, and so bring the characters more clearly out. The possession of these manuscripts I recognise as the obligation to exhibit them.
The man who lavishly spent his money, troubled his own house; so also did the man who greedily hoarded it. Between these two extremes the path of safety lies in the scriptural rule, “Use this world as not abusing it” (1 Cor. vii. 31).
The house — the family is God’s own work. He intends that it should be a blessing to his creatures. He framed it to be an abode of peace and love. He visits his hand-work to see whether it is fulfilling its destiny. Let the disturber beware; an eye is on him that cannot be deceived, a hand is over him that cannot be resisted. Whether it be husband or wife, parent or child, master or servant, the disturber of a house must answer to its almighty Protector for abusing his gifts, and thwarting his gracious designs. “Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be called the children of God.” How shall we best bring peace into a family on earth, and keep it there, until the little stream that trickles over time be lost in the ocean of eternity? Invite Christ into the house, and the hearts of its inmates. “He is our peace,” — with God and with each other. Invite Him to come in; conbtrain Him to abide.