A Wife's Power | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1874

A Wife's Power.

The power of a wife for good or evil is irresistible. Home must be the seat of happiness, or it must be forever unknown. A good wife is to a man, wisdom, courage, and strength; a bad one is confusion, weakness, and despair. No condition is hopeless to a man where the wife possesses firmness, decision, and economy. There is no outward prosperity which can counteract indolence, extravagance, and folly, at home. No spirit can long endure bad domestic influence. Man is strong, but his heart is not adamant. He delights in the enterprise and action, but to sustain him he needs a tranquil mind; and especially if he is an intellectual man, with a whole heart, he needs his moral forces in the conflict of life.

To recover his composure, home must be a place of peace, of cheerfulness, and of comfort. There his soul renews its strength and goes forth with fresh vigor to encounter the labor and troubles of life. But if at home he finds no rest, and is there met with bad temper, sullenness, jealousy, or gloom, or is assailed by complaints and censure, hope vanishes and he sinks into despair. Such is the case with many who, it might seem, have no conflicts or trials of life; for such is the wife's power.