A HEAVEN OF HOME | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 14, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 49.

A HEAVEN OF HOME.

Not long ago a man was called to an educational position of great honor, one that involved larger social obligations than he and his wife had been accustomed to meet. She shrank from the new duties which would be laid upon her, chiefly from a sense of not having kept pace, intellectually, with her husband during their years of married life. Their income had been small, and she had been her own housemaid as well as a devoted mother to their three boys. This left little leisure for reading or study, and she was conscious that her husband had outstripped her in mental growth. When she expressed her misgivings to him, he replied, “Never mind, my dear, you have made a heaven of our home.” The answer shows something more than mere conjugal tenderness. It reveals a principle in human development. This woman, no less than her husband, had made solid gains in the years they had lived together. Over against his riches of intellect she could place a wealth of graces in character which fitted her to adorn any social position. In making a heaven of their home she had grown strong in patience, tact, sympathy, unselfishness, and the wisdom which comes from daily communion with God. These qualities have a positive value that is too often overlooked nowadays. Ambition for self-development is characteristic of the modern woman, but she is prone to consider books, travel, and cultivated society as the only means to this end. Yet the making of a home that is like heaven to husband and children is really a more efficient aid to true culture, because it exercises the soul as well as the brain.—Christian, Work.