| Home Making |
Chapter 2 |
Page 6 |
Alas! How many never realize the sacredness of the responsibility they so lightly assume! How many fail, too, to keep the holy trust! How many trample with rude feet upon the delicate lives they swore at the altar to defend and cherish till death! How many let selfishness rule instead of love! How many fail to answer the needs of the tender hearts they have pledged themselves to fill and satisfy with love! Every husband should understand that when a woman, the woman of his own free and deliberate choice, places her hand in his and thus becomes his wife, she has taken her life, with all its hopes and fears, all its possibilities of joy or sorrow, all its capacity for development, all its tender and sacred interests, and placed it in his hand, and that he is under the most solemn obligations to do all in his power to make that life happy, beautiful, noble and blessed. To do this he must be ready to make any personal sacrifice. Nothing less than this can be implied in loving as Christ loved his Church when he gave himself for it.
This love implies the utmost gentleness in manner. One may be very faithful and true and yet lack that affectionateness in speech and act which has such power to satisfy the heart. One of the special Scripture admonitions to husbands is that they love their wives and be not bitter against them. It is a counsel against all display of ill temper, all bitter feelings as well as angry words and unkind acts. The teaching of the passage strictly interpreted is that all bitterness should be suppressed in the very workings of the heart and changed into sweetness.
Page 6
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