Love-Making

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 11, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 31.

COURTESY can exist without love, but love without courtesy quickly gets bedraggled and haggard. For the maintenance of love, few notions would be more favorable than this, that home is a good practising-ground for habitual courtesy, neglecting which we shall make a poor show on field days. . . .

“Love-making” is a poor, wilted term which generally provokes a smile. I would raise love-making to a fine, weaving art, at which none could laugh, and I would employ all hands in the home at this busy loom. Love-making is not only the finest of the fine arts, but it is the sweetest of good employments. Thoughtfulness is the warp, and activity the woof; the design which grows on the piece is very beautiful to see. . . .

In the torn garment of the home life, hard hearts and unloving natures tear rent after rent until it is all in tatters, but love never lets the rents grow large; its busy needle patches them up; and by an art it must have learned in heaven, scatters the loveliest sprays of embroidery and silver work about the darn, so that what threatened destruction has proved to be a strength and a beauty, and the garment has become a symbol of love’s power instead of the jagged rags which witness to love’s defeat. —The Four Pillars of the Home.