Our Homes
“Domestic happiness thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the fall.’’’’
Cowper.
“Ho7ne is the resort Of love, of Joy, of peace and plenty, where, Supporting and supported, polished friends A?id dear relations mingle into bliss
Thomson.
“Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness.^’’ Psalm 112: 4.
The world owes to Christianity all that is meant by motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood, sisterhood, and wifehood. Canon Farrar says that in all the ancient classics there is no reference to the joys of childhood, and for the very good reason that the childhood of the ancients had little joy in it. The Roman’s child was counted among his household goods. In Sparta the child was the property of the state rather than of the parents, and a father had as much right to correct the children of his neighbor as his own. Home life was nothing, and to-day in some languages there is little difference between the meaning of home and house. Wherever the Bible is honored, as in England, the real home exists, but where the Bible is not read, even in so-called Christian countries, as in France, there is little of home life. When, therefore, you hear an infidel speaking in praise of home and magnifying its
II sweetness and joy, while he rejects the Bible, and refuses to honor Christ, write after his name in great black letters, the word IN-GRATE.
In America, where there is such a mixture of all nationalities, we need not be surprised to find that the home life is esteemed by some, while it is held in contempt by others. The Englishman carries in his heart wherever he goes the sacredness of his home, while the Frenchman is apt to take with him nothing more sacred than a house. In our American life, however, the home is the foundation of the church and the state. As the homes are pure, the churches will be prosperous, and the state permanent.
The fourth verse of the ii2th Psalm gives us the foundation principle of home happiness. “Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness.” Everything depends upon uprightness of purpose, thought, character, and that implies right relation between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, master and servant. In proportion as this right relation exists, the home is full of light; when wrong relation exists, it is certain to be full of darkness.
A dark shadow in many American homes is the disobedience of children to parents. Some parents are bringing up their children in the way they should not go. God commended Abraham because he taught his children obedience, and if obedience is not taught in your home, you are training future anarchists and criminals. If the child does not obey the parent, he is not apt to obey God or the state. It is the duty of every parent to teach his children the relation between obedience and reward, disobedience and punishment. There is a sickly sentimentalism prevalent in some quarters which says that a child should never be punished. Paul asks the question, “What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” and he declares that such chastisement is the proof of true sonship, for “if ye be without chastisement, then are ye bastards and not sons.” “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” and the father that does not lovingly chasten a child for disobedience is not a true father. Solomon spake truly when he said “he that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” I know that Solomon’s advice is considered by some as out of date, old fogyish, but I am simple enough to believe that when he wrote those words he was inspired of God, and he spoke a principle that applies to all ages of the world.
Someone asked a mother if she believed in the laying on of hands for the cure of diseases.
She said she did, for she had effectually cured her boy of smoking cigarettes in that way. Whatever you may think of the laying on of hands as a religious ceremony, if you love your child you must not withhold the proper punishment for disobedience. Let it never be done in anger. If you are mad, cool off, take a shower-bath, sit down and think, wait till to-morrow, do anything rather than provoke a child to wrath by your own hot temper.
Another shadow is discord between husband and wife. I have just noticed in the newspapers that a young man failed to appear when the hour of his marriage came, because his bride objected to his wearing russet shoes and a black tie. It was not said which one prevailed, though there were mutual explanations, and the marriage took place. I fear that the home will be full of shadows. Where tastes are different and each one asserts and magnifies the difference, there can be no harmony, and where there is no harmony there is no happiness.
That there may be harmony. Christian marriages should be in the Lord. “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” A Christian should not marry an atheist or an infidel. This does not apply to non-church members, for there are many such in sympathy with Christianity, and would like to be Christians. But it does apply with tremendous emphasis to those who are open opponents of Christianity like those around the church to which Paul was writing. At your peril marry one who does not hesitate to express his opposition to the Christ you love. All honor to the Baltimore girl who, a few years ago, returned the engagement ring to her affianced as soon as she learned that he belonged to an infidel club. It brought him to his senses and led him to think seriously of a subject which he had flippantly despised, and the result was his conversion.
It goes without saying that drink is the shadow in many a home, and it is a sad fact that social drinking customs are on the increase. We have spent so much time discussing the political phase of the drink traffic, and advocating prohibition, that we have neglected, I fear, to train the young in the principles of total abstinence. The decanter and the demijohn are going again into the homes of not a few Christian people. I plead with you by the agonies of a drunkard’s wife, and the disgrace of a drunkard’s child, and the terrors of a drunkard’s hell, to keep the accursed stufT out of your homes.
Another shadow in some American homes is extravagance, living beyond one’s income.
Receiving $5 a week and spending $6 means misery sooner or later. It means inability to pay debts, and the loss of manliness that follows. Receiving an income of five thousand dollars and spending five thousand and fifty will bring a shadow. Better a humble home in a cottage, or a garret, with bread and water paid for, than a palace splendidly furnished and supported by an outlay that fills your life with perplexity and burden.
And that brings me to say that one of the common home shadows is everlasting worry. Stanley tells us that few of his men were killed by elephants and tigers. They suffered most from the “jiggers,” little insects that it takes a microscope to sec. They get under the nails and the skin, producing irritation that frequently causes death. The “jiggers” of life worry many people into their graves. I read some time ago the experience of a hunter who shot a tiger, and thought he had killed him, but, on his approaching, the tiger sprang up and seizing the hunter by the knee, crushed the bone, and then fell back dead. The hunter found himself unable to walk, and his cries were not heard. After a few hours, however, he forgot the tiger and even the broken bones in his terrific struggle with thousands of little ants. They covered him, and every nerve seemed to be bored with a hot awl. But for timely rescue he had soon been killed by the ants.
So it is in many human experiences. It is not the great tiger of calamity and grief that Idlls us, but the little ant worries of everj-day life.
Let us now turn from the shadows to the light which, sooner or later, will make all shadows flee away. We might express almost everj-thing under this head in one word: “love.” “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” ]Iu5t I love my wife well enough to sacrifice myself for her as Christ sacrificed himself on Calvary? That is it exactly. Listen again, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.” “He that loveth his wife loveth himself.” We husbands are rather fond of ourselves. We are certain not to hurt ourselves, if we can help it. Not for the world would we neglect our own interest and pleasure. Let us be as careful for our wives, if, as husbands, we would be in the line of Apostolic succession. Not simply furnishing a home and supplying the table, but with continual thought and tenderness seeking the wife’s highest good and greatest joy.
Sir Walter Scott began his married life in a very humble cottage. With his own hands he made the dining-room table. Over the gate in front of the house he twisted the boughs of two willow trees; his wife and he came out in the moonlight and walked backward toward the house to observe the magnificence of their arched gateway. The splendor of Abbotsford did not attract him more than the sweet simplicity of this cottage in which love contrived and strove for mutual enjoyment.
It is a love married to sympathy. We are told in an ancient legend that when Theseus was about to enter the labyrinth with drawn sword in hand to destroy the monster, his sister Ariadne tied around his ankle a silken thread, and told him that when he felt the gentle pulling of this thread he might know that she was thinking of him. In the struggle with the monster the gentle tug of the silken thread strengthened the hero’s arm and helped to make him victorious. How beautifully this illustrates the sympathy between husband and wife. He goes out to struggle with the monsters of perplexity, it may be of misfortune. If he can feel the gentle pulling of the silken thread of sympathy at home it makes him brave and patient.
And so the sympathy of the husband with the wife helps her to bear the burdens of the home. When Abraham Lincoln received the telegram announcing his nomination for the Presidency of the United States, he rose, put on his hat and coat, and said to the friends, “There is a little woman at home who would like to hear this.” And he went off to spend the evening with her. Dark days when death had entered their home came in after years, and it was this silken thread of sympathy between them that helped them to bear what God’s Providence had sent.
Every man’s life is more or less a projection of the home of his childhood into the future. What he was made at home he is apt to be ever afterward. If he was taught to steal and lie there, he will be a thief and a liar in life. If he was taught to be true and gentle and pure in the home, truth and gentleness and purity will follow him all his days. The Princess of Wales, you know, is a native of Denmark. She speaks several languages fluently, but she said to a friend, “I always think in Danish.” The language of the home filled her thoughts and was a part of her mental structure.
The home influence never utterly forsakes us, and many times moves us to noble endeavor. A French soldier boy lay sick in the hospital at Geneva. The physician telegraphed to his father that he must hurry, if he would see his son alive. The old man came and found the boy very weak. “I have no appetite, father,” he said, “what I eat I must force, and unless there is a change I cannot live long.” The father took from his vah’se a bundle of brown bread which had been cooked by the boy’s mother at home. The moment he saw it he said, “I think I could eat that.” It was the thought of home that gave him appetite and brought him renewed vigor. As the bread made at home strengthened his body so the instruction and influence and prayers of a godly mother or father will strengthen the soul of the child in future years. He will love religion because it was honored at home. He will love purity because his mother was pure. He will love gentleness and harmony because they were together in the home of his childhood.
One word more. Homes on earth are easily broken up. Death enters and the home is sold, the family is scattered, misfortune passes it on to the hands of another. But there is a home before which the hearse never stops, and on the door of which the crape is never tied. Jesus calls it “Father’s house.” Some of our dear ones are there to-day, and their presence beckons us onward. As the Tyrolese fishermen return from their day’s work through the fog, their wives and daughters stand on the shore and sing their native songs. The husband or brother catches the strains of the music, and joining in it directs the prow of his little vessel toward home. Can we not hear through the fog of time the music that floats to us through the open door of our Father’s house in heaven? It is the music of love and peace and joy. Shall we not join in it while we direct our course toward the eternal home.?