| Home Making |
Chapter 3 |
Page 14 |
I quote a few words from Mr. Arnot: “They call woman sometimes, in thoughtless flattery, an angel, but here an angel in sober truth she is, a messenger sent by God to assuage the sorrows of humanity. The worn traveler who has come through the desert with his life and nothing more; the warrior faint and bleeding from the battle; the distressed of every age and country, long instinctively for this Heaven provided help. Deep in the sufferer’s nature, in the hour of his need, springs the desire to feel a woman’s hand binding his wound or wiping his brow – to hear soft words dropping from a woman’s lips… Woman was needed in Eden; how much more in this thorny world outside! Physically, the vessel is weak, but in that very weakness her great strength lies. If knowledge is power in man’s department, gentleness is power in women’s.”
These are words that every wife should ponder. Every home should be a Bethesda, “a house of mercy,” where the suffering, the weary, the sorrowing, the tempted, the tried, the fallen, may ever turn sure of sympathy, of help and of love’s holiest fruits.
Two little stories of Elizabeth of Hungary illustrate this point and show the reward which such service brings. Her kindness to the sick and the poor was unbounded. Once she brought a leprous child to her palace and laid it in her own bed, because there was no other place to lay it. Her husband heard of it and came in some displeasure and drew down the cover of the bed to see if the object concealed there was really as loathsome as he had heard. And lo! Instead of the festering and leprous body he saw the Saviour, radiant with glory, and turned away awe stricken and yet glad. That was what Jesus said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” The ministries rendered to the poor, the suffering, the tempted, the sorrowing, are wrought as to Christ himself.
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