By J.R. Miller
"The primal duties shine aloft like stars;
The charities that sooth and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
The smoke ascends
To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth
As from the lofty palace."
--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Home life ought to be happy. The benediction of Christ on every home to which he is welcomed as an abiding guest is, "Peace be to this house." While perfection of happiness is unattainable in this world, rich, deep, heart-filling happiness certainly may be, and ought to be, attained.
Yet it requires wise building and delicate care to make a home truly and perfectly happy. Such a home does not come as a matter of course, by natural growth, wherever a family takes up its abode. Happiness has to be planned for, lived for, sacrificed for, ofttimes suffered for. Its price in a home is always the losing of self on the part of those who make up the household. Home happiness is the incense that rises from the altar of mutual self-sacrifice.
It may be said, in a word, that Christ himself is the one great, blessed, secret of all home happiness; Christ at the marriage altar; Christ when the baby is born; Christ when the baby dies; Christ in the days of plenty; Christ in the pinching times; Christ in all the household life; Christ in the sad hour when farewells must be spoken, when one goes on before and the other stays, bearing the burden of an unshared grief. Christ is the secret of happy home life.
But for the sake of simplicity the lesson may be broken up. For one thing, the husband has much to do in solving the problem. Does a man think always deeply of the responsibility he assumes when he takes a young wife away from the shelter of mother-love and father-love, the warmest, softest human nest in this world, and leads her into a new home, where his love is to be henceforth her only shelter? No man is fit to be the husband of a true woman who is not a good man. He need not be great, nor brilliant, nor rich, but he must be good, or he is not worthy to take a gentle woman's tender life into his keeping.
Then he must be a man, true, brave, generous, manly. He must be a good provider. He must be a sober man; no man who comes home intoxicated, however rarely, is doing his share in making happiness for his wife and family. He must be a man of pure, blameless life, whose name shall grow to be an honor and a pride in his household. Husbands have a great deal to do with the matter of happiness at home.
The wife, too, has a responsibility. It should be understood at the very beginning, that good housekeeping is one of the first secrets of a happy home. If a man must be a good provider, a woman must be a good home-maker. No woman is ready to marry until she has mastered the fine arts of housekeeping. Home is the wife's kingdom. She holds very largely in her hands the happiness of the hearts that nestle there. The best husband, the truest, the noblest, the gentlest, the richest-hearted, cannot make his home happy if his wife be not in every sense a helpmeet. In the last analysis, home happiness does depend on the wife. She is the true home-maker.
Children, too, are great blessings, when God sends them, bringing into the home rich possibilities of happiness. They cost care, and demand toil and sacrifice; ofttimes causing pain and grief: yet the blessing they bring repays a thousand times the care and cost. It is a sacred hour in a home when a baby is born and laid in the arms of a young father and mother. It brings fragments of heaven trailing after it to the home of earth. There are few deeper, purer joys ever experienced in this world than the joy of true parents at the birth of a child. Much of home's happiness along the years is made by the children. We say we train them, but they train us ofttimes more than we train them. Our lives grow richer, our hearts are opened, our love becomes holier when the children are about us. Croons a young mother over her babe:--
"And art thou mine, thou helpless, trembling thing,
Thou lovely presence? Bird, where is thy wing?
How pure thou art! fresh from the fields of light,
Where angels garner grain in robes of white.
"Didst thou bring 'sealed instructions' with thee, dove,
How to unlock the fount of mother-love?
Full well dost thou fulfil thy winsome part;
With holy fire they're writ upon my heart.
"My child, I fear thee! thou'rt a spirit, soul!
How shall I walk before thee? keep my garments whole?
O Lord, give strength, give wisdom for the task,
To train this child for thee! Yet more I ask:
"Life of my life, for thee I crave best gifts and glad,
More than, even in dreams, thy mother had!
O Father! fine this gold! Oh, polish this, my gem!
Till it is fair and fitting for thy diadem."
Jesus said of little children that those who receive them, in his name, receive him. May we not then say that children bring great possibility of blessing and happiness to a home? They come to us as messengers from heaven, bearing messages from God. Yet we may not know their value while we have them. Ofttimes, indeed, it is only the empty crib and the empty arms that reveal to us the full measure of home happiness that we get from the children. Those to whom God gives children should receive them with reverence. There are homes where mothers, who once wearied easily of children's noises, sit now with aching hearts, and would give the world to have a baby to nurse, or a rollicking boy to care for. Children are among the secrets of a happy home.
Turning to the life of the household, affectionateness is one of the secrets of happiness. There are hundreds of homes in which there is love that would die for its dear ones; and yet hearts are starving there for love's daily bread. There is a tendency in some homes to smother all of love's tenderness, to suppress it, to choke it back. There are homes where the amenities of affection are unknown, and where hearts starve for daily bread. There are husbands and wives between whom love's converse has settled into the baldest conventionalities. There are parents who never kiss their children after they are babies, and who discourage in them as they grow up all longing for caresses. There are homes whose daily life is marred by incessant petty strifes and discourtesies.
These are not exaggerations. Yet there is love in these homes, and all that is needed is that it be set free to perform its sweet ministry. There are cold, cheerless homes which could be warmed into love's richest glow in a little while, if all the hearts of the household were to grow affectionate in expression. Does the busy husband think that his weary wife would not care any longer for the caresses and marks of tenderness with which he used to thrill her? Let him return again for a month to his old-time fondness, and then ask her if these youthful amenities are distasteful to her. Do parents think their grown-up children are too big to be petted, to be kissed at meeting and parting? Let them restore again, for a time, something of the affectionateness of the childhood days, and see if there is not a blessing in it. Many who are longing for richer home happiness, need only to pray for a spring-time of love, with a tenderness that is not afraid of affectionate expression.
"Comfort one another;
With the hand-clasp close and tender,
With the sweetness love can render,
And looks of friendly eyes.
Do not wait with grace unspoken
While life's daily bread is broken:
Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies."
We ought not to fear to speak our love at home. We should get all the tenderness possible into the daily household life. We should make the morning good-byes, as we part at the breakfast-table, kindly enough for final farewells; for they may be indeed final farewells. Many go out in the morning who never come home at night; therefore, we should part, even for a few hours, with kindly word, with lingering pressure of the hand, lest we may never look again in each other's eyes. Tenderness in a home is not a childish weakness, is not a thing to be ashamed of; it is one of love's sacred duties. Affectionate expression is one of the secrets of happy home life.
Religion is another of these secrets. It is where the Gospel of Christ is welcomed that heaven's benediction falls: "Peace be to this house." There may be a certain measure of happiness in a home without Christ, but it lacks something at best, and then when sorrow comes, and the sun of earthly joy is darkened, there are no lamps of heavenly comfort to lighten the darkness. Sad indeed is the Christless home, when a beloved one lies dead within its doors. No words of Christian comfort have any power to console, because there is no faith to receive them. No stars shine through their cypress-trees. But how different it is in the Christian home, in like sorrow! The grief is just as sore, but the truth of immortality sheds holy light on the darkness, and there is a deep joy which transfigures the sorrow.
Then may we not even put sorrow down as one of the secrets of happiness in a true Christian home? This may seem at first thought a strange suggestion. But there surely are homes that have passed through experiences of affliction that have a deeper, richer, fuller joy now than they had before the grief came. The sorrow sobered their gladness, making it less hilarious, but no less sweet. Bereavement drew all the home hearts closer together. The loss of one from the circle made those that remained dearer to each other than before. The tears became crystalline lenses through which faith saw more deeply into heaven. Then in the sorrow Christ came nearer, entering more really into the life of the home. Prayer has meant more since the dark days. There has been a new fragrance of love in the household. There are many homes whose present rich, deep, quiet happiness sorrow helped to make.
But it is not in sorrow only that religion gives its benediction. It makes all the happiness sweeter to have the assurance of God's love and favor abiding in the household. Burdens are lighter because there is One who shares them all. The morning prayer of the family, when all bow together, makes the whole day fairer; and the evening prayer before sleep, makes all feel safer for the night. Then religion inspires unselfishness, thoughtfulness, the spirit of mutual helpfulness, of burden-bearing, and serving, and thus enriches the home life.
After a while the young folks scatter away, setting up homes of their own. How beautiful it is then to see the old couple, who, thirty or forty years before, stood together at the marriage altar, standing together still, with love as true and pure and tender as ever, waiting to go home. By and by the husband goes away and comes back no more, and then the wife is lonesome and longs to go too. A little later and she also is gone, and they are together again on the other side, those dear old lovers, to be parted henceforth nevermore. And that is the blessed end of a happy Christian home.
