p. 117 | SAVED BY FAMILIES by S. M. I. H.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 20, 1900

SAVED BY FAMILIES.

By S. M. I. H.

THE unbelief of the husband does not make him any less a part of the believing wife, but the faith of the believing wife makes him half a believer in spite of himself; for they are one flesh, and the faith of the believer does sanctify, or set apart, the unbelieving to the faith that must sometime become a realization. This is true in your case according to your faith to receive it, and your willingness to be, to live, and to labor for it.

There is another doctrine that has been promulgated by the world for its selfish benefit. Because of the hardness of the unbelieving heart, God has left for the help of those who are still on the plain of unbelief, some things that do not belong to his own people. He has not only given statutes that are not good, by which wicked men may shorten their own days of misery, but he has also given instructions by which those who will not accept the true principles of family life may “break up” the concern that is profanely called by that holy name; and then he has thrown to each of its human fragments a rope. And shall those who call themselves the saved people of God reach out after this rope, which can belong only to the lost, or seek to adjust their family affairs according to any of those things that are only allowable because the hard-hearted and unbelieving will catch hold of them, and so may be kept afloat until they may be able to understand the only words that lead to life?

“They twain shall be one flesh.” “For to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.” How beautiful is the possibility! Behold! here are a man and a woman who have been living together for years: he has made himself cruel with drink, with tobacco, and unbelief. By the grace of God she has found, in the untold sorrows that she has been made to suffer, that which has driven her to find her dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, where he himself has taught her many new things out of the depths that are hidden in his bosom. The divine Teacher has taken her back to first principles, and from that standpoint she looks at her husband, and in its primeval glory she lives and labors together with God. But the more she reveals of God, the denser seems to grow the darkness in which her husband lives. The more she loves the truth, the more he seems to hate it. The more tender and true she becomes as a wife, the more demoniac and unlike a Christian he seems to become, until finally one day he lays his hand violently upon her. What shall she do then?—Shall she run away to her neighbors to escape the second blow, or go to camp-meeting expecting never to return?—O, no; for she stands in a place so light with truth that she has no occasion to flee; she only says, gently, with a tender, tearful quaver in her tone: “Forgive me, darling, that I struck you.”

“Struck me!” he cries fiercely. “You did n’t strike me: I struck you, and I’ll do it again!”

“O, no,” she says, “it was I struck you, and I am sorry. Forgive me; for, you see, this is your arm: you and I are one; this is your arm, and the arm that struck is my arm, if it does hang from that shoulder. Forgive me that I struck you.”

Could he strike her again?—Nay, verily; but humiliated and sobered, he can only listen as she goes on:—

“I do at least a half of all the mean things that your hands do, and am one half responsible for all you say with your tongue, because you and I are one; and in my efforts to serve the Lord, and in my love of the truth, you have a half interest, if you do think you hate it. This is your heart, you know, for I gave it to you long ago; it is yours; it is not mine any longer. It has not been since those days when you and I found each other. It is your heart that has been given to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is filled with the love of the truth. My love of the truth is yours—all yours, for I am yours, all there is of me.”

Do you suppose that any man who ever loved a woman well enough to ask her in marriage, could stand long under any such a rendering of the truth, and face it down? I would like to see the man who could do it. He would be a curiosity. He is not in one of your homes.

What is needed to bring about that perfect union of the family is a revival of the old spirit of loving that came out of God, in sufficient measure to make it possible for these two to win each other out of all the world of men and women for themselves. That spirit, reinforced by the truth of God, and the larger opportunities which it brings, would be invincible in any home.

But in spite of all this, some one will still say: “But there are homes in which no reconciliation can take place, where the wife must stand alone for the truth, where there is continual bickering, and fretting, and confusion. She can not by anything that she is able to do change this condition. What shall she do?”

One thing is still settled,—one person alone can not make a quarrel; so she can make peace in her house by making quarreling impossible through silence; and after that, it is her privilege to be an open channel through which the Lord shall fill her home so full of the power of his Spirit, and make her life such a continual testimony to the truth, that the unbelieving, contentious husband will very soon do one of two things,—he will either say, “She is the truth, and I must yield myself to the truth in her, and be led by the same Spirit that leads her,” or, refusing to do this, he will run away. If he will not yield, he can not long endure such an atmosphere, and must leave it behind.

But what is the matter with this contentious, reckless, unbelieving husband?—Simply that he is spiritually sick. What he needs is to have the floods of that river of healing waters about which Ezekiel tells us in his forty-seventh chapter, come flowing in upon him, not simply to the ankles, or the knees, or to the loins, but “waters to swim in,” which shall carry him off his feet into the depths of salvation. These waters go down toward the desert, where even the dead fish are, and where everything, even the dead in sin, shall be healed; for as these waters “go down into the desert . . . everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the waters shall come, shall live.”

And if this seems impossible to you, I have only to take up the words of Christ, and say, “O thou of little faith,” and again, “according to your faith be it unto you.” If your faith be for salvation, family and all, this you will have; if your faith be for failure, failure and loss shall be your portion. It will be a sad day for any who are responsible for a broken home when our Lord shall come.

S. M. I. H.