The Home
The Home
Home’s not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded;
Home is where Affection calls—
Filled with shrines the Hearth hath builded! . . .
Home’s not merely roof and room,
It needs something to endear it;
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there’s some kind heart to cheer it!
– Charles Swain
Take care that neither of you speak of the home as my home or even my house; it must be our home, our house. And each of you must put honest work into your homelife if it is to realize the ideal.
“If a man and a woman,” so says a modern writer, “are to live together well, they must take the plant of love to the sunniest and securest place in their habitation. They must water it with tears of repentance or tears of joy; they must jealously remove the destroying insects and pluck off the dead leaves that the living may take their place. And if they think they have any business in this life more pressing than the care and culture of this plant, they are undeserving of one another, and time’s revenges will be swift and stern.”
One of the first necessities in the homelife is politeness. Why should a man cease to treat his wife as a lady because she is always at his side? Is she not as sensitive to notice an offense and as quick to appreciate a tiny attention as she ever was? Are the trifling courtesies of life robbed of their fragrance because they are given by her husband? If she drops her handkerchief, he must still pick it up, but she must not drop it simply to test him. If she rises to leave the dining room, he must still open the door. If he does not catch what she says, he must still say, “I beg your pardon.” He must still save her needless exertion. Let him always act as a knight in the order of Christian gentleness, of Christ’s highbred nobility. Noblesse oblige toujours (Nobility always obliges). And she must always be the trueborn gentlewoman because she is one of the King’s daughters.
There must also be the willingness to ask pardon and to forgive. Sometimes it has happened that one has been nervously agitated and the other unduly sensitive; a word has flashed like a sword from its sheath, causing an injury for many an hour afterward, hurting the one who inflicted it even more than the one who suffered. How much better it would be if the unkindness were instantly followed by the frank confession and restoration, like God’s, to the old, blessed place of sunlight. This would be far better than to leave the matter to right itself or to act as though it had never happened, as each one surely knows that it has left a scar. It is not enough to bring a present from the city to pacify the sin. Let the poison be pressed out of the wound so it can be properly healed. Let there be the frank confession, by which the two stand together hereafter in a common fight against a common foe.
The home should be founded on Christ. There should be family prayer, either morning or evening, or both. Nothing will so sweeten and purify the homelife as this. The monks who built the cathedrals of the world held that wherever the worship of God is set up, obscene demons hasten to leave the spot. Therefore, they carved the gargoyles at right angles to their buildings, and supposedly, the evil spirits, pledged to mar the blessed-home happiness, flee from where the family gathers for prayer day by day.
But more than this, the spirit of Christ should rule the conversation at the meals, the literature strewn on the side tables, and the expenditure on the household maintenance. Even where it is not constantly mentioned, it should control and mold, for the working of God’s providence is evident in no book of the Bible more than in the book of Esther, though His name is never mentioned there from the beginning to the end.
Dr. Horton reminded us that when John Eliot was an usher in Thomas Hooker’s school at Little Baddow, he did not tell us that Hooker talked to him, but said, “Here the Lord said to my dead soul – live! And through the grace of Christ, I do live, and I shall live forever. When I came to this blessed family, I then saw, and never before, the power of godliness in its lively vigor and effectiveness.” Would that all our homes were filled with the same heavenly and divine spirit, which would attract men as the scent of flowers does the bees. But hearts, like alabaster boxes, must be dedicated to the service of Jesus and broken over His feet before the house can be filled with the odor of the ointment.
We must exercise a rigid self-regimen if the atmosphere of our homes is to be sweet and healthy. Walter Scott always concealed his fits of depression from his friends because, he said, it was bad enough for him to bear them without inflicting them on others. And Emerson has said, “One topic is peremptorily forbidden to all rational mortals: namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have the headache, or leprosy, or thunderstroke, I beseech you by all the angels to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning. Come into the azure and love the day.” It is true, however, that they who hide their own passing phases of gloom must not be careless of the expression of pain or sorrow on the faces of others, but be keen to notice and quick to sympathize. It may be that a little loving tenderness will dissipate the clouds.
The husband should trust the wife with the household expenditures. Let them decide together what style they will adopt and what weekly or monthly sum they can spend; only let it be within their means. Then it is for him to give her the money regularly and for her to lay it out as carefully and judiciously as she knows how. She will do better if she is trusted than if he is always overhauling her methods and inspecting her accounts. Of course, there should be accounts, and once a month they should go through them together. Certainly, she should have enough for dress, for little extras of taste, and for general house expenses. But there must be no debt, and there should be a little saved and put sacredly away for a time of illness, the holidays, or the arrival of the little baby. And she should be told how much he is making, and what the outlook is. If there is more, she will be glad; if less, she will brace herself to economize. All the payments should be in ready cash, no overdue bills, no debts, no long-running accounts. And the money should be in hand before the dress is ordered or the new furniture procured for the house.
These are general principles that must be applied by each couple for themselves, but on the whole, they are sound principles for all, and it is from a lack of these that so many marriages have been wrecked before they have adventured long on life’s stormy seas.
William Cobbett tells us that when he saw his future wife, flushed and docile, at the washtub, he said, “That’s the wife for me.” He began life with as little money as anyone, but he saw no reason why he should not marry; he got his fortune in his wife’s serviceableness. Young men will do well to see if, beneath the girl’s accomplishments and degrees, she can, at a push, cook a mutton chop and know how long to boil a potato. Of course, a good husband hopes his wife may always be saved from work to which she was not accustomed when he brought her from her father’s home, but if she does no household work herself, she should know how it should be done. And I earnestly advise all young women who are about to marry, and young wives who are not quite sure of themselves, to determine to learn how to order a home, cook a dinner, make a dress, and turn faded curtains or carpets. Nothing demeans a true woman but ignorance of her part in making some bare and barren spot cozy and comfortable for him and for her.
Into our homelife, Jesus comes as He did to Cana and Bethany. As at Cana, His presence turns the water into wine, the secular to sacred, the commonplace to consecrated, and the relationship of time to the chalice of the eternal and divine. As at Bethany, He sits at the festive board or on the porch at the close of day, accepting the service of Martha and educating her faith, instructing the heart of Mary into the mysteries of death and resurrection, and preparing her for a supreme act – raising Lazarus from death to life and binding all in one.
Not once beat, “Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design.
I, who saw power, see now love perfect, too!
Perfect I call Your plan!
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete – I trust what You shall do.”
– Robert Browning
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Poems
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Dramatis Personae,