| J.R. Miller D.D. | Page 11 |
There are parts of the home duty which a woman can do infinitely better than a man. Men’s hands are clumsy, and often hurt gentle hearts, when it was meant that they should give healing and help. The man has the heavy care of providing for the household. There are tasks, too, for which woman’s gentler hands are better fitted. But let no husband nurse the notion that he has no responsibility for the happiness of his home beyond providing food and clothing and other comforts. His strong life should be the secure shelter beneath which his wife and children may safely abide. His character should be a continual revealing of the love and truth and holiness of God. He should live so that, seeing him day after day, his family shall learn to know the beauty of Christ. He is the priest of his house, and as such should both speak to God for his family and speak to them for God. Through him blessings should come to his home every day.
Brothers and sisters have their part in making the home happiness. Yet not always do they live together so as to make the music of the home one glad, sweet song. Sometimes there is a lack of congeniality in their dispositions. Then ofttimes there seems to be the feeling that home affections do not need the culture that other friendships require. We cannot be brusque, curt, or crude with other people, and expect them to bear patiently with us in spite of our unmannerly behavior. But we are sure of our ‘home friends’, – so we let ourselves feel, – and do not need to be gentle and thoughtful towards them. So it is that in too many homes brothers and sisters live together year after year under the same roof, mingling in the household communion, yet never forming close friendships, soul never knitting to soul, strangers to each other’s inner life. Thus many rich possibilities of close and holiest friendships are missed.
Another thing that too often mars the home life of brothers and sisters is a spirit of ‘commanding’ and criticism. Faults are seen, and openly, and not in a gentle way, pointed out and reproved. What one does the others are apt to do; and thus the habit grows, until little but ‘sharp speech’ and ‘inappropriate wrangling’ is heard in the home where the conversation might have so much in it of sweetness and profit.
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