Love, Honor and Obey

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 18, 1875

Love, Honor and Obey.

On the whole, married women, that is, real women, prefer to be ruled rather than ruling. It is scarcely in her nature to go speechlessly on doing what she has to do without aid or counsel. Almost any one of our sex is happier if she can “talk things over” with some man upon whose discretion she relies; and in married life most wives do, even in the smallest things, what “he” likes, and fancy that they like it themselves. Since independence has become the fashion, and strong-minded women have sneered at their more gentle sisters, there is a great affectation of despising the opinion of the men, but it is all sheer pretense. Almost every wife chooses her gloves and her ribbons of the tint that her husband admires, and the man she loves almost inevitably gives her her political opinions, and biases even her religious views. Her speech, her dress, her manner change under his influence. What he desires her to do she does in nine cases out of ten. The tenth case we find in the divorce courts. You may rule your wife as you please, good married reader, if you only love and pet her enough. Haughtiness and fault-finding alone will make restive. And you, dear girl, remember that it will be well to choose a husband good and noble and upright, so that you may obey him to your heart’s content without losing your own self-respect; for you will obey him if you love him; and if he be low and mean you will sink to his level slowly but surely in the course of years.—Sel.