| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 7 |
Page 3 |
Why, for instance, should either party, after the wedding day, cease to observe all the sweet courtesies, little refinements and charming amenities of the courtship days? Why should a man be polite all day to every one he meets – even to the porter in his store, and the bootblack or newsboy on the street – and then less polite to her who meets him at his door with yearning heart hungry for expressions of love? If things have gone wrong with him all day, why should he carry his gloom to his home to darken the joy of his wife’s tender heart? Or why should the woman who used to be all smiles and beauty and adornment and perfume when her lover came, meet her husband now with disheveled hair, soiled dress, and slatternly manner and face all frowns? Why should there not be a resolute continuance of the old politeness and mutual desire to please which made the wooing days so sunny?
Then love must be lifted up out of the realm of the passions and senses and spiritualized. There should be converse on the higher themes of life. Many persons are married only at one or two points. Their natures know but the lower forms of pleasure and fellowship. They never commune on any topic but the most earthy. Their intellectual parts have no fellowship. They never read nor converse together on elevated themes. There is no commingling of mind with mind: they are dead to each other in that higher region. Then still fewer are wedded in their highest, their spiritual natures. The number is small of those who commune together concerning the things of God, the soul’s holiest interests and the realities of eternity. No marriage is complete which does not unite and blend the wedded lives at every point. Husband and wife should be such along their whole nature.
This implies that they should read and study together, having the same line of thought, helping each other toward higher mental culture. It implies also that they should worship together, communing with one another upon the holiest themes of life and hope. Together they should bow in prayer, and together work in anticipation of the same blessed home beyond this life of toil and care. I can conceive of no true and perfect marriage whose deepest joy does not lie forward in the life to come.
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