The Family | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 24, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 24.

The Family.

It is in the family life that a man's piety gets tested. Let the husband be cross and surly, giving a snap here and a cuff there, and see how out of sorts everything gets! The wife grows cold and unamiable, too. Both are tuned on one key. They vibrate in unison, giving tone for tone, rising in harmony or discord together. The children grow up saucy and savage as young bears. The father becomes callous, peevish, hard, a kind of two-legged brute with clothes on. The wife bristles in self-defense. They develop an unnatural growth and sharpness of teeth; and the house is haunted by ugliness and domestic brawls. Is that what God meant the family to be—he who made it a place for love to build her nest in, and where kindness and sweet courtesy might come to their finest manifestations? The divine idea can be realized. There is sunshine

enough in the world to warm all. Why will not men come out of their caves to enjoy it?

Sometimes a man makes it a point to treat every man's wife well but his own—to have smiles for all but his kindred. Strange, pitiable picture of human weakness, when those we love best are treated worst; when courtesy is shown to all but our friends! If one must be rude to any, let it be to some one he does not love—not to wife, sister, brother, or parent. Let one of our loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave cannot hide the white faces of those who sleep. The coffin and the green mound are cruel magnets. They draw us farther than we would go. They force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when he looks over a wife's or a mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear then, and he sees as never before what it is to love and be loved; what it is to injure the feelings of the loved.—Christian Journal.