By J.R. Miller
In the home, love should come to its best. There it should reach its richest beauty. The song it sings there, should be its sweetest. All love's marvelous possibilities should be realized in the life of the home. Whatever love may achieve in any other relation or condition, home is the place where its lessons should be most perfectly learned. Home ought to be the holiest place on earth. It is to be a place of confidence. We are to trust each other perfectly there. There is never to be a shadow of doubt, suspicion, or lack of confidence in the home fellowships. There should need to be no locked doors, no hidden secrets, no disloyalties, no enmities, and no diverse interests, in the home relations. We should understand each other there. We should live together in perfect frankness and confidence. Each should honor the other. We should see good and never evil, in the others. We should trust each other. Our life together in the home should be characterized by perfect truth. Familiarity should never make us treat one another in any way which would give offence. The most familiar intimacy should not permit us ever to disregard the proprieties and amenities of the truest refinement. We should be more courteous in our homes, than anywhere else in the world.
All the Christian virtues should find their exemplification in the home life. "Love suffers long, and is kind." That is, love never wearies in suffering whether it be in its service of others or in the enduring of unkindness at the hands of others. Love continually demands self-denial and sacrifice, for the sake of others. When we say to another in whatever relation, "I am going to be your friend," we do not begin to know what it is going to mean to us to keep our word. We have to be always denying ourselves, giving up our own way, sacrificing our rights, giving our friend the pleasures we had expected to enjoy ourselves.
The story of friendship anywhere, is a story of cost and suffering--but it is in the home that it must suffer the most, make the greatest sacrifices. When husband and wife clasp hands at the marriage altar, they can fulfill their covenant of love only by mutual loving unto death. It may cost either of them a great deal to love as they have promised to do, until death separates them. Here is a man who loves his wife with a devoted affection. For ten years she has been a helpless invalid, and he has carried her from the bed to the chair, and up and down stairs, and has ministered to her in a most beautiful way, failing in nothing that she needed or craved, pouring out his life's best treasures to give her comfort or pleasure. This is ideal. So it should be in all the home relations. Love that stops at no cost, at no sacrifice, should be the law of the home life.
It should be the same with all the qualities of love. We are to exercise patience with every person we may meet, in all the relations of life--but we should show the sweetest and most Christlike patience in our own homes. Kindness is the great law of Christian life. It should be the universal law. We should be kind to everyone, not only to those who treat us with love--but also to those who are ungentle to us, returning to them love for hate. But in our own home and toward our own, our kindness should not only be unvarying--but be always exceptionally tender.
A writer suggests that members of a family, when they separate for the night or even for the briefest stay, should never part in any way but an affectionate way, lest they shall never meet again. Two incidents illustrate the importance of this rule. A distinguished man, when much past middle life, related an experience which occurred in his own home in his young manhood. At the breakfast table one morning he and a younger brother had a sharp quarrel about some unimportant matter. He confessed that he was most unbrotherly in his words, speaking with bitterness. The brother rose and left the table and went to his business, very angry. Before noon the younger man died suddenly in his office. When, twenty years afterward, the older brother spoke of the occurrence, he said that it had cast a shadow over all his life. He could never forgive himself for his part in the bitter quarrel. He had never ceased to regret with sore pain that no opportunity had come to him to confess his fault and seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
The other incident was of the parting of a working man and his wife. He was going forth to his day's duties and there was a peculiar tenderness in his mood and in their good bye that morning. He and his wife had their prayer together after breakfast. Then he kissed the babies, sleeping in their cribs, and returned a second time to look into their sweet faces. The parting at the door never had been so tender as it was that morning. Before half the day was gone, he was brought home dead. The wife got great comfort in her sorrow from the memory of the morning's parting. If their last words together had been marked by unkindness, by wrangling or quarreling, or even by indifference, or lack of tenderness, her grief would have been harder to bear. But the lovingness of the last parting took away much of the bitterness of the sorrow.
If we keep ourselves ever mindful of the fragility of life, that any day may be the last in our home fellowships, it will do much to make us gentle and kind to each other. We will not act selfishly any hour, for it may be our last hour together. We will not let strife mar the good cheer of our home-life any day, for we may not have another day.
Not much is told of our Lord's home life--but the few glimpses we have of it assure us that it was wondrously loving. Jesus was sinless, and we are sure, therefore, that nothing he ever said or did caused the slightest bitterness in any home heart. He never lost his temper, never grew angry, never showed any impatience, never was stubborn or willful, never was selfish, and never did anything thoughtless, never failed in kindness. We have enough hints of his gracious love for his mother down to his last kindly thought of her on his cross, to make us sure that he continued to the close, to be to her the perfect son.
It will help us in learning our lesson in its details if we will look at some Scripture words about love and apply them to the life of the home. "Love suffers long, and is kind." There come experiences in the life of many homes in which one has to suffer, make sacrifices, endure pain or loss, and bear burdens almost without measure, for the sake of the others. This is Christlike, though costly. "She is wasting her life," said one, indignantly, of the eldest daughter of a family. "She is denying herself all leisure, all good times, staying at home, working for the other children and her little mother, while they go out into society and have their pleasures. She is pouring out her life to give them the privileges they crave." Yes--but always some must toil while others rest; some must bear burdens while others go tripping along without question or care; some must sacrifice to the uttermost, while others indulge themselves. It may seem unfair, unjust--yet that is love, and it is by love that the world lives. The oil is consumed in the lamp--but the room glows with light. One life is consumed in service, misses the world's pleasures, goes without rest--but the home is made joyous and all things go smoothly. It scarcely seems fair to the one who sacrifices so--but that is love, and love is the greatest force for good and blessing in the world.
There is more of the picture. There are few more hateful things in the world than envy, and in no other place is envy so hateful as when it appears in the home. Love drives out envy. "Love does not boast, is not puffed up." Love is humble, lowly, does not strut, does not assert itself, and does not assume superiority. There are homes in which there is too much pompous vaunting, where one lords it over others. But it is most unbeautiful, most utterly unloving.
"Love does not behave unseemly." Anything that is crude, ungentle, unrefined, discourteous, is unseemly, unfit. So love takes note of coarseness in behavior, of bad manners. "I am not required to mind everybody's tender points," one may say. "I cannot be ruled by other people's sensitiveness." Yet one who loves as Jesus loved--is considerate of others even if others are over sensitive. That is what thoughtfulness teaches. Boorishness in others never makes it right for us to be boorish in return. It is in the home that this refinement is most beautiful and does most for making happiness. The love that is most divine, does not behave itself unseemly. Godly people may be awkward, may not understand the rules of etiquette, may unconsciously violate the dictates of fashion at table or in society, and yet not behave unseemly. What is required is the gentle spirit in the heart that would not give pain to anyone, though it may know nothing of the arbitrary rules of fashion. For one may never fail in the smallest things of society manners, and yet in heart may be most unrefined and unseemly.
The lesson runs on. "Love seeks not its own." This is the heart of the whole matter. Seeking its own is the poison of all life. Love never seeks its own--but it always thinks of the other person. If this were the universal rule in our homes there would be no disputes, no strifes, no asserting of ourselves; each would serve the other. "Love is not easily provoked." Getting provoked is the danger always in every place where lives meet and mingle. Many people are touchy and fly into anger at the slightest provocation. This is the bane of too much home life--it is hurt ofttimes by impatience and irritability. It is given to quick retorts. It resents suggestion and question. It does not restrain itself nor check its bitter feeling. It is given to hasty speech. The love that is not provoked gives only gentle replies, however crude and irritating the words spoken may be. Such loving, with its soft answers which turn away wrath, is a prime secret of home happiness.
These are only a few of the specific qualities of love which are mentioned in a few verses of one chapter of the New Testament. Many more might be cited. These rules of love were not given specifically with reference to home life--but as to the way a Christian should live anywhere. They are suggested here as touching the home, because home is where love should always reach its best. Home should be love's school; there we should learn love's lessons. Then when we go out into the world and take up our tasks and duties--we will be ready for them, and the lessons we have learned in the school of home we shall go on practicing in daily life.
Is it not time we tried to make more of our homes? It is not time we got more love into them? For one thing, there is pitiful need of cheer and encouragement in most homes. There is more blame heard than praise. There are those who give their lives without reserve for the good of the household, and scarcely ever hear a word of thanks. How much comfort and help it would give, to hear now and then a word of appreciation! How it would cheer many a wife and mother whose life is given out in untiring work, if she heard words of praise from those for whom she lives! It is not monuments when they are dead that women want--but they would rather a thousand times have a simple word of kindness and appreciation, day by day, as they toil.
Says Hugh Black: "In our relation with each other, there is usually more advantage to be reaped from friendly encouragement, than from friendly correction. There are more lives spoiled by undue harshness, than by undue gentleness. More good work is lost from lack of appreciation than from too much of it; and certainly it is not the function of friendship to do the critic's work."
No crowns in heaven will be brighter than those shall wear who have lived out love's lessons in their own homes. Nearly everyone has known some home, in which nearly all of whose light has come from one member of the household. Frederick W. Robertson, referring to such a life, asks: "What was the secret of her power? What had she done? Absolutely nothing; but radiant smiles, beaming good humor, the tact of knowing what everyone wanted, told that she had got out of self and had learned to think of others; so that at one time it showed itself in deprecating the quarrel, which lowers brows and raised tones already showed to be impending, by sweet words; at another by smoothing an invalid's pillow; at another by soothing a sobbing child; at another by humoring and softening a father who had returned weary and ill tempered from the irritating cares of business. None but she saw those things."
