Part 12 (1/2)
ADVICE TO LOVERS.
Let me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning, before you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution; inquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the taste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take the heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put your lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation for being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of G.o.d wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.
Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has been or ever will be, is good character.
ASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL
in this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They are the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you than any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your happiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,
ASK G.o.d.
I used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about to offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong companion, he opened the conversation by saying, ”Let us pray.” But I have seen so many s.h.i.+pwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up my mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in prayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and poverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all the path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with its wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last farewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam and Eve, parted.
And let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or woman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to the Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through difference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your mind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear, remembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who have been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and immediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green gra.s.s on quiet graves. And perhaps, my brother, my sister, perhaps you may appreciate each other better in heaven than you have appreciated each other on earth.
In the ”Farm Ballads” our American poet puts into the lips of a repentant husband after a life of married perturbation these suggestive words:
”And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me, And lying together in silence, perhaps we will agree.
And if ever we meet in heaven, I would not think it queer If we love each other better because we quarrelled here.”
And let me say to those of you who are in happy married union,
AVOID FIRST QUARRELS;
have no unexplained correspondence with former admirers; cultivate no suspicions; in a moment of bad temper do not rush out and tell the neighbors; do not let any of those gad-abouts of society unload in your house their baggage of gab and t.i.ttle-tattle; do not stand on your rights; learn how to apologize; do not be so proud, or so stubborn, or so devilish that you will not make up. Remember that the worst domestic misfortunes and most scandalous divorce cases started from little infelicities. The whole piled-up train of ten rail cars telescoped and smashed at the foot of an embankment one hundred feet down came to that catastrophe by getting two or three inches off the track. Some of the greatest domestic misfortunes and the widest resounding divorce cases have started from little misunderstandings that were allowed to go on and go on until home, and respectability, and religion, and immortal soul went down in the crash, cras.h.!.+
And, fellow-citizens as well as fellow-Christians, let us have a divine rage against anything that wars on the marriage state. Blessed inst.i.tution! Instead of two arms to fight the battle of life, four.
Instead of two eyes to scrutinize the path of life, four. Instead of two shoulders to lift the burden of life, four. Twice the energy, twice the courage, twice the holy ambition, twice the probability of worldly success, twice the prospects of heaven. Into that matrimonial bower G.o.d fetches two souls. Outside the bower room for all contentions, and all bickerings, and all controversies, but inside that bower there is room for only one guest--the angel of love. Let that angel stand at the floral doorway of this Edenic bower with drawn sword to hew down the worst foe of that bower--easy divorce. And for every Paradise lost may there be a Paradise regained. And after we quit our home here may we have a brighter home in heaven at the windows of which this moment are familiar faces watching for our arrival and wondering why so long we tarry.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Dr. Talmage, in common with many critics, here censures Mr. James Anthony Froude for making the disclosures. It is, however, due to that eminent historian to say that he gives a different explanation of his motives than that suggested by Dr. Talmage of a regard for ”shekels.” He states that as Mr. Carlyle had selected him as his biographer and given the materials for the work into his hands, he conceived that his duty as a conscientious man was to tell the whole truth. He did it also as a matter of policy as well as of principle. Had he kept back any part, it would have been told with less accuracy by others who knew some of the facts but not all of them.--ED.
MATERNITY.
”Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.”--I SAMUEL 2:19.
The stories of Deborah and Abigail are very apt to discourage a woman's soul. She says within herself: ”It is impossible that I ever can achieve any such grandeur of character, and I don't mean to try;”
as though a child should refuse to play the eight notes because he cannot execute a ”William Tell.” This Hannah of the text differs from the persons I just now named. She was an ordinary woman, with ordinary intellectual capacity, placed in the ordinary circ.u.mstances, and yet, by extraordinary piety, standing out before all the ages to come.
THE MODEL CHRISTIAN MOTHER.
Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, who was a person very much like herself--unromantic and plain, never having fought a battle or been the subject of a marvelous escape. Neither of them would have been called a genius. Just what you and I might be, that was Elkanah and Hannah. The brightest time in all the history of that family was the birth of Samuel. Although no star ran along the heavens pointing down to his birthplace, I think the angels of G.o.d stooped at the coming of so wonderful a prophet.