| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 7 |
Page 4 |
Perfect mutual confidence is an element of every complete marriage. Husband and wife should live but one life, sharing all of each other’s cares, joys, sorrows and hopes. There should not be a corner in the nature and occupation of either which is not open to the other. The moment a man has to begin to shut his wife out from any chapters of his daily life he is in peril, and in like manner her whole life should be open to him. There should be a flowing together of heart and soul in close communion and perfect confidence. No discord can end in harm while there is such mutual intersphering of lives and such interflowing of souls.
Once more, no third party should ever be taken into this holy of holies. No matter who it is – the sweetest, gentlest, dearest, wisest mother, the purest, truest, tenderest sister, the best, the loyalist friend – no one but God should ever be permitted to know aught of the secret, sacred married life that they twain are living. This is one of those relations with which no stranger, though he be the closest bosom friend, should intermeddle. Any alien touch is sure to leave a blight.
There are certain influences that bring out all the warmth and tenderness needed to make any marriage very happy. When one is sick, how gentle and thoughtful it makes the other! Not a want or wish is left unsupplied. All the heart’s affections – long slumbering, perhaps – are awakened and become intent on most kindly ministry. No service is thought a hardship now or done with any show of reluctance. There is not a breath or look of impatience. Love flows out in tone and look and word and act. There is an inexpressible tenderness in all the bearing. Even the coldest natures become gentle in the sick room, and the rudest, harshest manners become soft and warm at the touch of suffering in the beloved one. Or let death come to either, and what an awakening there is of all that is holiest and tenderest and sweetest in the heart of the other! If the dead could be recalled and the wedded life resumed, would it not be a thousand times more loving than ever it was before? Would there be any more the old impatience, the old selfishness? Would there not be the fullest sympathy, the largest forbearance, the warmest outflow of the heart’s most kindly feelings?
And why may not married life be lived day by day under the power of this wondrous influence? Why wait for suffering in the one we love to thaw out the heart’s tenderness, to melt the icy chill of neglect and indifference, and to produce in us the summer fruits of affection? Why wait for death to come to reveal the beauty of the plain and homely life that moves by our side and disclose the value of the blessings it enfolds for us? Why should we only learn to appreciate and prize love’s splendors and its sweetness as it vanishes out of our sight? Very sadly – and yet how truthfully! – has one sung:
“And she is gone, sweet human love is gone!
‘Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels
Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day
Beside you and lie down at night by you,
Who care not for their presence–muse or sleep;
And all at once they leave you.
Then you know then!
We are so fooled, so cheated!”
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