The Home and the Family
By Mrs. E. M. Peebles
The family is God’s own arrangement, the crowning work of creation. The loveliest of all that he created was that noble pair, made in the image of God and in his likeness, and placed in such relationship that each to the other was better than himself—thus at once making it impossible that there should be self-seeking in the mind of either, but each, while seeking the happiness of the other, would at the same time be insuring and increasing his own. Selfishness is the most deadly thing that exists, and self-seeking is satanic. God knew that it was not good for man to be alone, because any one much alone becomes self-centered, and that is why it is not good. So this beautiful pair was placed in the garden, with the command, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth,” etc. But even then there was danger that this pair, while by themselves, should be centered upon themselves, so the circle should be ever widening in such a way that a tie should exist between all, which should bind all together in love, and each would naturally seek the welfare of every other being; and the golden chain, the binding principle, should be love, not passion and self-gratification. And God’s thought in it all was to draw the mind away from self, to some other object; and so when the first babe came, and the great fountain of parental love was opened in the hearts of the first father and mother, what new revelations of God, their divine Maker and Father, must have come to them! Satan hated all this beauty and loveliness. It was too much like what he had lost in heaven, and he went at once about the work of destroying it. The first thing he did was to separate the holy pair, then he stirred up anger and hatred and strife between their offspring, introduced a plurality of wives, then all the various forms of licentiousness and impurity, until the earth had to be sunk in water, and the race wiped out except one sample of what God had planned at the first. Noah and his family were saved. The sons were there with their wives, each pair a sample of what was in the mind of God at the beginning, but so degenerated that Satan had a strong hold upon them to start with. But it was the best that was left from the ruins. The family arrangement has not been entirely obliterated. There are still to be found in this sin-cursed earth, amid all the debauchery and corruption, monuments of God’s beautiful plan, families that are according to his mind, so that one is reminded of that beautiful text of Scripture, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the side of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” While it is true that the coming of God and the Saviour is near, and all things earthly are soon to close, and conditions are changed, there is no reason why we as a people, standing as we do for God and his principles of truth and purity, should join in the least with this corrupt and sinful people who are fast filling the cup of their iniquity, and use knowledge that science has given to further Satan’s plans to destroy the plans of God. Let the sisters who have been “set in families” make the best of it, but not resort to infanticide, abortion, or any of those unnamable inventions which proceed from Satan’s own brain, to enable men and women to give full sway to unbridled lust. Let us leave those things to go back to the source whence they originated, to be used only by those who are being led by him to destruction. God’s plan was right, and a woman who has never known the mother love has missed the sweetest thing in this wicked world, unless she has been a mother to some of those poor little waifs who are all around us, going down to destruction. They are God’s creatures, every one of them, and are just as precious in his sight as our own children. The happy laugh and innocent prattle of little children will put new life and inspiration into the hearts of older people, and it is good to be much with little children. Mothers who think they cannot live a Christian life with little children to try them would find just as great hindrance in any other condition. In the heart of every true woman there is a craving to know the sweetness of a mother’s love, and the unsealing of the fount of parental love cannot fail to give broader and more beautiful views of the plan of redemption. One can understand God better, and gain Christian experience more naturally. The beautiful text, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” has a new and sweeter meaning. It is sweeter to think of God as a parent than as a stern judge. A happy, well-governed family is the nearest thing on earth to that home above, where our Father dwells, and waits with yearning love to gather his earth-worn children home; and there will be great rejoicing in that day, when, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they shall come, forever safe from the danger of being torn and separated. Jesus is soon coming, and if we cannot any longer perpetuate God’s beautiful institution, let us not join with Satan to lower and degrade its pure principles, and allow them to trail in the mire of sin and iniquity. All the holy impulses which God implanted in the human breast must be given back to him, pure and untarnished by the corruptions which caused the downfall of Sodom, and which are eating like a canker through every strata of society, the whole mass of which is boiling and seething with iniquity, and is almost ready to go under in the last great purifying fires of the burning day, as the old world went under the waters of the flood. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters.”