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-22-
The Marriage Ring
Economy and Order in the management of her personal and domestic expenditure, are the obvious duty of a wife. You are to preside in the direction of household affairs; and much of the prosperity and comfort of the little community will depend upon your skilful and prudent arrangements. There is a manifest disposition, in this age, in all classes of society, to come as closely as possible to the habits of those above them. The poor are imitating the middling classes, and they are copying the upper ranks. A showy, luxurious, and expensive taste is almost universally cherished, and is displayed in innumerable instances, where there are no means to support it.
A large house, a country residence, splendid furniture, a carriage, a retinue of servants, and large parties, are the aim of many, whose creditors pay for all. Christian families are in most imminent peril of worldly conformity in the present day; and the line of demarcation between the Church and the world is fast wearing out. It is true, they have no cards, they do not frequent the theater, or the ballroom, and perhaps they have no midnight routs—but this is all; for many are as anxious about the splendor of their furniture, the fashion of their habits, the expensiveness of their entertainments, as the veriest worldling can be.
Now a wife has great influence in checking or promoting all this. It has been thought that this increasing disposition for domestic show and gaiety is to be attributed chiefly to female vanity. It is woman that is generally regarded as the presiding genius of such a scene, she receives the praise and the compliment of the whole, and she therefore is under the strongest temptation to promote it. But let her consider how little all this has to do with the happiness of the family, even in its most prosperous state; and how a recollection of it aggravates the misery of adversity, when a reverse takes place. Then to be found in debt for finery of dress or furniture; then to have it said that her extravagance helped to ruin her husband; then to want that for bread, which was formerly wasted on luxury; then to hear the whispered reproach of having injured others by her own thoughtless expenditure!
Avoid, my female friends, these miseries; do not go on to prepare wormwood and gall to embitter still more the already bitter cup of adversity. Endeavor to acquire a skillfulness in domestic management, a frugality, a prudence, a love of order and neatness, a midway course between meanness and luxury, suitableness to your station in life, to your Christian profession, an economy which shall leave you more to spare for the cause of God and the miseries of man. Rather check than stimulate the taste of your husband for expense; tell him that it is not necessary for your happiness, nor for the comfort of the family; draw him away from these adventitious circumstances, to the mental improvement, the moral culture, the religious instruction of your children. Let knowledge, piety, good sense, well-formed habits, harmony, mutual love, be the sources of your domestic pleasures. What is splendor of furniture, or dress, or entertainments, to these?
A wife SHOULD BE MOST ATTENTIVE TO ALL THAT CONCERNS THE WELFARE AND COMFORT OF THE CHILDREN. For this purpose, she must be a keeper at home. "That they may teach the young wives to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home." And how can the duties that devolve upon the female head of a family be well discharged, if she be not a keeper at home? On this I have dwelt already, in a former chapter, but its importance will justify my returning to the subject again. How much has she to attend to, how many cares to sustain, how many activities to support, where there is a young family. Whoever has leisure for gossiping, she has none; whoever may be found wandering from house to house, "hearing or telling some new thing," she must not.
A mother's place is in the midst of her family; a mother's duties are to take care of them. Nothing can excuse a neglect of these; and yet we often see such neglect. Some are literary characters, and the welfare of the household is neglected for books. Not that I would debar a female from the luxury of reading; far from it; but her taste for literature must be kept within due bounds, and not be allowed to interfere with her household duties. No husband can be pleased to see a book in the hands of a wife, while the house is in confusion, and the children's comfort unprovided for. Much less should a taste for company be allowed to draw a wife too much out of the circle of her care and duties. To be wandering house to house in the morning, or to be engaged till a late hour, evening after evening, at a party, while the family at home are left to themselves, or to the care of servants, is certainly disgraceful.
Even attention to the public duties of religion must be regulated by a due regard to domestic claims. I am aware that many are apt to make these claims an excuse for neglecting the public means of grace almost entirely; the house of God is unfrequented; sermons, sacramental seasons, and all other religious meetings, are given up, for an absorbing attention to household affairs. This is one extreme; and the other is, such a devotedness to religious meetings, that the wants of a sick family, the cries of a hungry infant, or the circumstances of some extraordinary case of family care, are not allowed to have any force in detaining a mother from a weekday sermon, a prayermeeting, or the anniversary of some public institution.
It is no honor to religion, for a wife, under such circumstances, to be seen in the house of God; duties cannot be in opposition to each other; and, at such a time, hers lie at home. It must be always distressing, and, in some cases, disgusting, for a husband, on his returning to a scene of domestic confusion, and seeing a neglected child in the cot, to be told, upon inquiring after the mother that she is attending a sermon or public meeting. There is great need for watchfulness in the present age, when female agency is in such requisition, lest attention to public institutions should most injuriously interfere with the duties of a wife and mother. I know very well that an active woman may, by habits of order, punctuality, and dispatch, so arrange more direct and immediate duties at home, as to allow of sufficient leisure to assist the noble societies which solicit her patronage, without neglecting her husband and children; but where this cannot be done, no society whether humane or religious, should be allowed to take her away from what is, after all, her first and more appropriate sphere. She must be a keeper at home, if anything there demands her presence.
Such appear to me to be the leading duties of a wife. Motives of a very high and sacred character may be offered for a diligent performance of them. Her own Comfort, and that of her husband, is of course most vitally connected with a fulfillment of her obligations; and the welfare of her children is also deeply involved. And then, her character shines forth with peculiar luster. A GOOD WIFE is a high attainment in female excellence; it is woman in her highest glory since the fall.
But there is one consideration of supreme importance, mentioned by the apostle, to which I shall direct your attention. "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that if any obey not the Word, they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives, while they behold your chaste conversation, coupled with fear." Powerful and yet tender consideration! Mark, my female friends, the implied eulogy passed by the apostle on your sex, where he seems to take it for granted that if one party be destitute of religion, it is the husband. And facts prove that this assumption was correct.