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-18-
The
Marriage Ring
The Love of Christ is UNIFORM. Like Himself, it is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Conjugal affection should have the same character; it should be at all times and in all places, alike; the same at home as abroad; in other persons' houses, as in our own. Has not many a wife to sigh and exclaim, "Oh that I were treated in my own house, with the same tenderness and attention as I receive in company." With what almost loathing and disgust must such a woman turn from endearments, which under such circumstances she can consider as nothing but hypocrisy. Home is the chief place for fond and minute attention; and she, who has not to complain of a want of it there, will seldom feel the need or the inclination to complain of a want of it abroad; except it be those silly women, who would degrade their husbands, by exacting not merely what is really kind, but what is actually ridiculous.
The Love of the Redeemer was PRACTICAL and LABORIOUS. He provided everything by His mediation for the welfare and comfort of the Church, and at a cost and by exertions of which we can form no idea. It has been already declared that both parties are to assist in the cares of life. A good wife cannot be an idle one. Beautiful is her portraiture, as drawn by the wise man. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates."
This exquisite picture, combining as it does industry, prudence, dignity, meekness, wisdom, and piety, cannot be too frequently or minutely studied, by those who would attain to high degrees of female excellence. The business of providing for the family, however, belongs chiefly to the husband. It is his to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness, and to drink, if necessary, the waters of affliction, that he may earn, by the sweat of his brow, a comfortable support for the domestic circle. This is probably what the apostle meant, when he enjoined us to give honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel; the honor of maintenance, which she, in consequence of the weakness of her frame, and the frequent infirmities which the material relation brings upon her, is not so well able to procure for herself.
In general, it is for the benefit of a family that a married woman should devote her time and attention almost exclusively to the ways of her household; her place is in the center of domestic cares. What is gained by her in the shop, is oftentimes lost in the house, for want of the judicious superintendence of a mother and a mistress. Comfort and order, as well as money, are domestic wealth; and can these be rationally expected in the absence of female arrangement? The children always want a mother's eye and hand, and should always have them. Let the husband, then, have the care of providing; the wife, that of distributing to the necessities of the family; for this is the rule both of reason and revelation.
And as Christ labored for His Church, not only during His abode upon earth, but made provision for its welfare when He departed from our world, in like manner should the husband take care of his wife. I never could understand the propriety of that custom, which is but too common, of men's providing by their will so much better for the children than they do for the mother. Does this look like a supreme love? Every man, who raises a woman to the rank of his wife, should take care, however inferior she might have been in circumstances before their marriage, to leave her in the situation into which he brought her; for it is indeed most cruel, to leave her to be deprived at once not only of her dearest earthly friend, but of her usual means of comfortable subsistence.
A practical affection to a wife extends, however, to everything; it should manifest itself in the most delicate attention to her comfort and her feelings; in consulting her tastes; in concealing her failings; in never doing anything to degrade her, but everything to exalt her before her children and servants; in acknowledging her excellences and commending her efforts to please him; in meeting, and even anticipating, all her reasonable requests; in short, in doing all that ingenuity can invent for her substantial happiness and general comfort.
Christ's love to His Church was durable and unchangeable. "Having loved his own, he loved them to the end," without abatement or alteration. So ought husbands to love their wives, not only at the beginning, but to the end of their union; when the charms of beauty have fled before the withering influence of disease; when the vigorous and sprightly frame has lost its elasticity, and the step has become slow and faltering; when the wrinkles of age have succeeded to the bloom of youth, and the whole person seems rather the monument than the resemblance of what it once was. Has she not gained in mind what she has lost in exterior fascinations? Have not her mental graces flourished amidst the ruins of personal charms? If the rose and the lily have faded on the cheek, have not the fruits of righteousness grown in the soul? If those blossoms have departed, on which the eye of youthful passion gazed with so much ardor, has it not been to give way to the ripe fruit of Christian excellence? The woman is not what she was, but the wife, the mother, the Christian, are better than they were. For an example of conjugal love in all its power and excellence, point me not to the bridegroom, displaying, during the first month of their union, all the watchfulness and tenderness of affection; but let me look upon the husband and wife of fifty, whose love has been tried by the lapse and the changes of a quarter of a century, and who, through this period and by these vicissitudes, have grown in attachment and esteem; and whose affection, if not glowing with all the fervid heat of a midsummer's day, is still like the sunshine of an October noon, warm and beautiful, as reflected amidst autumnal tints.
But, before I go away from this view of a husband's especial duty, I must just advert to another rule of his regard, which is laid down for him by the apostle. "So ought men to love their wives, as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself." A man's children are parts of himself; his wife is himself; "for they two shall be one flesh." "This is the duty and the measure of it, too; which is so plain, that if he understands how he treats himself, there needs nothing be added concerning his demeanor towards her; for what mighty care does he take of his body, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evil, and studies to make for it fair provisions, and is very often led by its inclinations and desires, and does never contradict its appetites, but when they are evil, and then also not without some trouble and sorrow!" So let a man love his wife as his own body.
Can it be necessary to apply the force of motives, to an appropriate attention to such a duty? If so, I appeal to your sense of honor. Husbands, call to recollection the wakeful assiduities, and the tender attentions, by which you won the affection and the confidence of the woman, who forsook her father, and her mother, and the home of her childhood, to find a resting place for her heart in your attachment; and will you falsify the vows you plighted, and disappoint the hopes you raised? Is it accounted a disgraceful stigma on a man's reputation, to forfeit the pledges of a lover? Oh, how much more dishonorable, to forget those of a husband! That man has disgraced himself who furnishes just occasion to the partner of his days, to draw with a sigh a contrast between the affectionate attention she received as a lover and as a wife.
I urge affection to a wife, by the recollection of that solemn moment, when, in the presence of Heaven and earth, you bound yourself by all the deeply awful formalities of a kind of oath, to throw open, and keep open your heart, as the fountain of her earthly happiness, and to devote your whole life to the promotion of her welfare.
I appeal to your regard to Justice. You have sworn away yourself to her, and are no longer your own. You have no right to that individual, and separate, and independent kind of life, which would lead you to seek your happiness in opposition to, or neglect of hers. "You twain are one flesh."
Humanity puts in its claim on behalf of your wife. It is in your power to do more for her happiness or misery, than any other being in the universe but God Himself. An unkind husband is a tormenter of the first class. His victim can never elude his grasp, nor go beyond the reach of his cruelty, till she is kindly released by the king of terrors, who, in this instance, becomes to her an angel of light, and conducts her to the grave as to a shelter from her oppressor. For such a woman there is no rest on earth: the destroyer of her peace has her ever in his power, for she is always in his presence or in the fear of it: the circumstances of every place, and every day, furnish him with the occasions of cruel neglect or unkindness, and it might be fairly questioned, whether there is to be found on earth a case of greater misery, except it be that of a wretch tortured by remorse and despair, than a woman whose heart daily withers under the cold looks, the chilling words, and repulsive actions of a husband who loveth her not. Such a man is a murderer, though he escapes in this world the murderer's doom; and by a refinement of cruelty, he employs years in conducting his victim to her end, by the slow process of a lingering death.
If nothing else can prevail, Interest should; for no man can hate his wife, without hating himself, for "she is his own flesh." Love, like mercy, is a double blessing; and hatred, like cruelty, is a double torment. We cannot love a worthy object without rejoicing in the reflex beams of our own affection. Next to the supreme regard we cherish towards God, and which it is impossible to exercise and not hold communion with the angels in the joys of Heaven, connubial love is the most beatifying passion; and to transvenom this into unkindness, is to open, at the very center of our soul, a source of poison, which, before it exudes to torture others, torments ourselves.