The home God meant

Foreword

S the title indicates, the goal of these pages is the picturing of such a home as God would have men and women enjoy. However far short of the goal the reader, on reaching the last page, may feel that the writer has fallen, it is hoped that at least there will have been suggested a vision of The Home God Meant, with some measure of quickening to strive toward its attainment.

The viewpoint of the book is that of the Master as he faced the home situation of his day. There were good homes then. He had been reared in one of them. It is not hard to see in his sayings many a reminiscence of the gracious home life that had sheltered his childhood and youth. But it was not so in all of the homes. Even religious leaders were sanctioning many a false standard of home relations.

Jesus met such misguided teachings by saying that it was not so in the beginning. He would show us that the way up to better homes is the way back to the beginning, back to what was in the mind of God when he made man in his own image, male and female.

This viewpoint is followed throughout the book. The attempt is made to range widely

FOREWORD through matters of home interest, from the day of marriage to the day of giving in marriage; from that day when young man and maiden forsake fathers and mothers to cleave to each other, for better or for worse, to that other wedding day, day of trust, when these twain in turn give son or daughter to forsake them and cleave to other flesh and blood. In every chapter, from whatever angle the home and the home folks are viewed, their tasks, their joys, and their sorrows, their mistakes and their sins and their repentings, their new starts and their hopes, always the point of view is what God has given us to understand of his creative purpose in making man in his own image, male and female.

It is believed that a thoroughly Christianized home life would be one of the greatest forces in Kingdom progress. It is the earnest prayer of the writer that these modest pages may make some little contribution to that Christianizing process.

Chapter I

YOUNG business man and his minister sat together at a business men's luncheon. "Well, Henry," began the minister, "I see you have had a specially fine New Year's Day. When did your happiness leave town?"

"Yesterday. Unfortunately, being a schoolteacher, she is subject to schedule."

"And when are you going to change the schedule?"

"Probably next fall."

" That's just fine. We shall all be mighty glad to have Helen here. Will you buy, or build, or rent ? ' '

"Our plan is to rent for a while. The first winter we will do a lot of thinking and talking and projecting, Then we will either buy, if we can find what suits us, or, preferably, build according to our own ideas. I don't want to get a permanent home all ready before we are married. I want Helen here first, so that her ideas will go into our home."

In that brief parley, the true note in the music of home-building had been sounded. The young man's voice was very gentle, suiting the restraint upon his spirit, as he spoke of holding all plans in suspension until they could work out their will together. That is the foundation idea for the home God meant.

Just now these two are living many miles apart, engaged in different occupations, or, as it might be said in transposed phrase, in different occupations, engaged. They may have happy thoughts of each other, and dream dreams of and for each other, and it would be entirely possible for the young man to plan, build, and furnish an elegant home, all ready for his bride to enter and be crowned its queen, his queen. But, however nice for her that program might be, however it might ease her of the worries of planning and building, however pleasing to her womanly taste the elegance of her prepared home might be, in entering it in that way she would find it more difficult to become the queen God meant her to be than in the working out of the program these two have planned for themselves.

The ideas of comradeship, mutual interest, mutual rights, mutual responsibility, are rooted and grounded in the beginnings of the joint life of a man and a woman. The moment these ideas cease to be honored, that moment home happiness and home stability are in jeopardy.

In some instances, more common now, doubtless, than formerly, marriage begins on a basis of affluence. There are indeed homes marvelously beautiful in their love and happiness, started on that basis. But the happiness in such homes is not, as many foolishly suppose, due to the affluuence, but in spite of it. That is to say, happiness here is built upon the same foundation that happiness is built upon in any home, rich or poor. Lives are bound together by struggle, by aspiration, by reaching with joined hands after what is not yet attained, by sharing work and disappointment and patience and hope, by enduring hard things together, by mutual comfort and cheer, by keeping step all along the rough road, by coming to the goal of success side by side, or side by side facing the fate of defeat, forever feeling that the best of all is that they have each other.

Jesus forced back to the beginning the thoughts of those who were giving religious sanction to loose ideas of the sacredness and inviolability of the marriage bond. He recalled as the ultimatum in the whole problem what had been said in the beginning, when God made man male and female, namely, that these two are to become one flesh. Male and female are different — different by divine purpose, different for human happiness, different in order to be one, different that each may lack something which the other can supply, different that each may give something needed for the other's completeness, different that each may profit by the strength of both, different that neither alone but both together may build the home God meant. There is nothing known to man more wonderful, more holy, more vital and useful, more capable of glory or degradation, more constructive or destructive of human happiness, than the difference between male and female. Upon that difference the highest home happiness is built. From that difference the most terrible of domestic tragedies spring. It is to be thought about, hallowed, guarded. The appalling record of easy divorce is possible just because men and women fail to guard and hallow and tenderly and devoutly think about the difference between male and female as due to the good hand of our God upon us. In making man male and female, God ordained that in mutual tenderness, in mutual respect, in mutual love, for the increasing joy of both, husband and wife should be one flesh. There can be no safe and sound ideas of home-making save by going back to the beginning, and facing fairly and reverently, modestly and boldly, what God meant when he made man and woman so to be.

While reverent regard for sex difference will sanctify passion, as it was meant to do, that difference has a wider significance, and plays splendid part in far-reaching ranges of the effort to gain the home ideal. Both physically and mentally, while much alike, man and woman are different. There is a masculine way of looking at things, and there is a feminine way of looking at things. There is a man's way of thinking through a problem, and there is a woman's way of solving that problem. The significant thing is that both of these ways are important. It is to be understood, of course, that this is only a general observation, and not an assertion of an invariable and perfectly obvious line of demarcation between masculine logic and feminine intuition. Upon that difference, which is real, is to be built up by steadfast and uninterrupted devotion the habit of mutual counsel, of complete confidence and frankness. It is always dangerous for a husband or a wife to have a secret from the other, and especially to have an outside intimacy more confidential than that at home.

There is more than one kind of hazard involved when either husband or wife keep the other unadvised of any ambition or purpose or undertaking. For one thing, there is the hazard of making a mistake. No one can afford to ignore the counsel of others. In business matters, about the details of which she knows little, and therefore must guard herself against taking a dictatorial attitude, the wife's intuition is not seldom a surer suggestion of the wise course to be pursued than the husband's reasoned judgment. Her insight into the character of a smooth swindler is often clearer. It would be stupid even to suggest the laying down of an arbitrary rule requiring a husband to submit all business plans to the wife for her decision, or a rule requiring the wife to submit all household problems to the husband for his oracular deliverance upon them. In either case a set of howling complications might ensue. The point is simply this, that counsel with each other, in all matters, is important, all important to both husband and wife, even from the point of view of business prosperity and smooth household management.

But there is another point of view. That is the danger that husband and wife will grow apart, instead of growing together as God meant. It is a sad day in any home, when either of those who have been mated for life is not interested in and does not care even to talk about what is much in the heart of the other. Too often it happens that, without really having meant to do it, a man and his wife drift into a state wherein it has come to pass that in the main interests of life their ways are as separate and individual as those of two bachelors dwelling on opposite sides of the city. Made one by marriage, they are becoming twain in their minds. It may be that they will have enough decency not to be divorced. But so drifting, so living, they are more and more becoming strangers to the home happiness God meant.

The divine idea is that, just as Henry and Helen purposed in their hearts not to build or even plan a home till they could do it together, taking sweet counsel each of the other, so, all the days of a man with his wife upon the earth, they twain should be one, increasingly one flesh and one mind, continual kindling a common interest in all the things that concern either and both. Each is useless without the other. A certain sad man uttered a great truth in his brief but deeply significant reply to the question, "Where is your home, sir?" "I have no home," he said. "My wife died a year ago."

Chapter II

WO married men who had been schoolconfidential friends in the dormitory, and the most intimate of their confidences had been about a love affair. Now again came a situation for more confidences, more intimate, more revealing, more sacred, than any that had gone before. Each was eager to know, and as eager to tell, how marriage looked from his present viewpoint.

The best that was in that talk is worth telling here. One of them had passed through some rather tempestuous courtship ordeals. It was a case of true love, must have been, for its course had not run at all smoothly. Some of the spitefuls had openly condemned his wooing and maliciously hinted of troubles to come. But the troubles went elsewhere. For these two built a home of rare happiness and usefulness. That was because it was started in the right way.

4 4 We began our living together in prayer, audible prayer. Each of us prayed that way. After we had read from the Bible and kneeled, I

They had been offered my petitions for our home, and especially that our God would bless my Mary. When I had finished my prayer, Mary prayed also, more briefly, for she was not used to audible prayer, as I was. She, too, asked that God would bless our home, and make us a blessing to each other. Also she prayed for particular blessings upon me, her husband. It was not an easy thing for either of us at first, but from the first it has been a blessed thing for both. We have found that when husband and wife pray that way together, they cannot get very far apart."

Mark the finding: When husband and wife pray that way together, they cannot get very far apart. That sweetest of all promises to those who pray together, so often quoted as encouragement in a little prayer meeting which ought to be large, is rather suited to the conditions of the home life, even in the beginning of that home when as yet there are but two members. "For where two or three [even but two] are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." When those whom God has joined together keep the Master's presence in the midst of their home life, no man or woman can put them asunder. They are safe from the eternal triangle, and all other angles that make sharp corners and bad tempers in the house where people must dwell together.

If there be teamwork in prayer, there will follow teamwork in all the games, and in all the labors, and in all the aspirations, and in all the fightings, and in all the trails of the whole home adventure. For marriage is a great adventure, a potentially continuous romance, with thrills and surprises and mysteries and terrors and ecstasies, sometimes with tragedies, and, to every honest pair, mated in God's will, with assurance of joy unspeakable.

As with most heroic undertakings, the most baffling and difficult hindrance is the unexpected and the uncalculated, and this is often of the pettiest dimensions. One of the five or six greatest engineering feats of all history was the building of the Panama Canal. From many points of view it was difficult and daring. But one of the things that put the enterprise most in jeopardy was just the mosquito, the tiny, terrible mosquito. With the triumph over that menace, success was assured. Of the less than five or six great spiritual engineering feats to which home-building belongs, it may be confidently said that what is hardest to overcome is resident in little things, little things diffusing deadly poison, turning trust into suspicion, gentleness into harshness, frankness into sullenness, endearments into faultfindings, love into hatred, and issuing in despairing incompatibility.

Let it be taken from God, who made man and woman, and ordained that husband and wife shall cleave to each other until death shall part them, that the whole nagging, buzzing, stinging brood of insect invasions of the home can be destroyed as effectively as mosquitoes were dealt with in the building of the Panama canal. The secret is teamwork in prayer.

Even horses running together in the field from the days when they were little colts until they are broken to harness, must be taught to pull together in order to do good teamwork. So husband and wife, though they have been boy and girl playmates, when their lives are bound together by the vows of marriage, find the need, in this deeper acquaintance, of a new and often not easy mutual adjustment. They must fit themselves to each other. They must learn to pull together in all things. If they find that tastes differ, that eagerness in one is matched by indifference in the other, that what is very much desired sometimes must be gone without because it is disagreeable to the home companion, and that contrariwise something exceedingly disliked must be endured because it is necessary to the comfort of life's partner, it ought not to be thought that a strange thing has happened, or that these trials are above what is common to homes. Whatever of truth there may be in the saying that opposites attract, it is certain that within the most ardent attraction drawing husband and wife together, there are potential oppositions. Only the silliest of simpletons imagine that true love makes impossible the emergence of differences in desire. It is the mark of true love, not that it prevents temperamental differences, but that, when they occur, love controls and sanctifies them.

Failure to grasp and hold fast to this quite elementary matrimonial truth leads to many a needless wreckage of what might be a very happy home life. Thus it is often hastily assumed, when bad-tempered clashings of will occur, that husband and wife never really loved each other and that therefore it will be better for everyone that they be divorced. It is further assumed that people who once or many times get very angry with each other, can never really and truly love each other again, even if they once did love devotedly, and that therefore they ought not to try to live together. Also, it is too often assumed that if husband and wife did not really love each other when they were married, it is impossible for them to learn to love each other after marriage, and therefore, having satisfied themselves that it was a mistake for them to get married, they conclude that the only way out of their misery and into happiness is to break their marriage vows. But every one of these is a false assumption. Until comparatively recent times, marriages for the most part were arranged by parents, yet very, very many such marriages were happy. It is quite true that our modern way is vastly superior. But in those earlier days husband and wife often learned to love each other devotedly after they were married. And no matter how little love there may have been at the marriage altar, although it is infinitely desirable that love should precede marriage, yet it is quite possible for it to be developed after marriage. Also, notwithstanding grievous differences and sore alienations, reconcilations are possible, and upon them may be built a wonderfully tender home relation. Furthermore, it is an utterly false assumption that a man and a woman who really and truly are in love can have no clash of wills, or, that, having had unhappy differences, an all-controlling, fully satisfying love cannot be reenthroned in both of their hearts.

The stupidest of all shallow sayings about wedded life is that marriage is a lottery. One might just as truly say, on the basis of gambler's luck, that business is a lottery. Happy marriages do not happen, any more than normal fortunes.

So, then, home builders have as their mutual task to fit themselves together. They are to discipline themselves in learning the art of pulling together in all things. Their interests, their responsibilities, their undertakings, their whole outlook henceforth must be reckoned one. The romance of home life, more wonderful than the romance of courtship, is meant to be a beautiful blending of the sentimental and the practical, the practical being the trellis on which the arbor growth of sentiment is to be trained. In some things the husband must lead in shaping the program, as, for example, in determining the time of meals in relation to business demands. In some things the wife must lead in shaping the program, as, for example, in arranging social engagments and in planning odd jobs about the home for holidays and other leisure hours. In some things both must join in shaping the program, as, for example, in planning savings accounts, benevolences, forming church and prayer-meeting habits. These things, and many like them, are important in themselves, belong to the necessities of making a home. They also have a very great indirect relation to the adventure of marriage. The doing of these things, the mutual observance of these relations, now of leadership, now of following, and again of jointly thought-out programs, will tend to perfect the adjustment of life to life, will make the energies of lives which before marriage were separate streams now one current.

One of the great urgencies in the starting of a home is an appreciation of the importance of getting together, and keeping together, of having frequent talks about everything in which either is at all interested, Home life soon gets to going in one of two directions, either in the direction of congeniality or in the direction of incompatibility. Both the virtue and the vice come as a growth. Neither, except in very limited area, is pronounced at the start. No two people ever feel themselves incompatible, when they are planning the wedding. Therefore, they are never necessarily incompatible. If the mood in which weddings are planned were kept up, no home would ever go to wreck on the rock of incompatibility. Neither are any two people in all things congenial when they are married.

It is quite true that some couples start life together having far more tastes in common than others. But in all cases there are great ranges of congeniality that have to be developed. Be thankful that in all cases this fine asset of the home listed as congeniality may be developed. Happy is that union wherein each one resolves, "I'm going to learn to like the things that my mate likes." There is a companion resolution well worth pondering, namely this: "As for me, I'm going to sacrifice whatever useless habit I have that is offensive to my dear one."

A pair of temptations must be noted in this connection, the one, though not always so, more commonly that of the man, and the other likewise, though not always so, more commonly the temptation of the woman. The temptation more natural to the woman, since it is proper to consider "ladies first, " is to be the whole conscience for the home. No good woman has any real intention of taking advantage of her husband by putting him in the wrong. It is an advantage, however, in defending one's attitude toward a question about which there is a difference of opinion, to reduce that question to a moral issue, and then charge the party of the second part with holding to what is " wrong." It makes anyone, particularly a woman — for it is given to her to lead in appreciation of moral values — inwardly comfortable to feel, in a difference, that one is contending, not for a private opinion, but for righteousness. There is a danger that even a good wife in her zeal for what she considers right may become an unconscious faultfinder, and without knowing it make her husband care more for his club than for his home. It is a delicate responsibility which God has committed to woman in endowing her with so fine a moral sense. The good wife that is of the Lord not only brings moral support to a good man in all his worthiest aspirations, but, even more, she is his inspiration in sheer ability to see which way righteousness leads. A gift so fine, with a use so high, should be zealously guarded against perversion.

The temptation more natural to the husband, just as subversive of home happiness if yielded to, is to withdraw from social life. He has been grinding all day, has had his temper ruffled a dozen times and his patience tried to the limit, and when the day's work is done he feels that there is no place like home. The wifely suggestion that they return some calls that evening is particularly inopportune. Of course he will not go. It is not to be thought of. But that is not the end of it. It riles him, and keeps him riled, that the suggestion could have been made. If his situation were appreciated, such inopportune suggestions never would be made. Before he knows it, if he is unwatchful, he will habitually come home ready to be irritated by any suggestion that would take him out of his groove. He is grooming to become a grouch. He forgets that while his day has been full of variety, that of his wife has been fairly monotonous. The contacts of the day have sufficed to satisfy any cravings for social touch that may be in his heart. Wife's day, however, especially young wife's day, is normally one of social fasting, unless she has gotten into the currents carrying so many away from home enthusiasms, and, if he does not watch, his irritableness will make her care more for afternoons out than for evenings in, with him at home. And so, while he earns the living, and does it proudly, and while she keeps his home neat and attractive, and does it loyally, these two, caring for each other, oh, yes, surely caring for each other, are really living quite separate lives. They are developing incompatibility which, while it may not become so bad-tempered as to drive them to the divorce court, does become so real as to cheat them out of the highest home happiness, because, instead of becoming more congenial, they are becoming less congenial.

It behooves both husband and wife to determine to be interested in all that interests either ; to study to be approved, each by the other; to keep the door of frankness open between their hearts; to be forever striving to widen the area of things in which they have a common interest, and to keep striving each to reduce as much as may be the area of things in which but one can have an interest; to work toward uttermost, happy congeniality. For they are mated for teamwork so long as both shall live.

Chapter III A Long Look Ahead

AFTER the marriage ceremony, at the first > breakfast by themselves, the bride and groom ought to begin planning their golden wedding. They tell us that the average length of life is on the increase. We read more often than formerly of fiftieth anniversaries. At any rate, homes ought to be started in the expectation of duration, and the people in them ought to five as if they were sure to live together for at least half a century. They ought to resolve to live as they would wish they had done in the year of jubilee.

The owner of a hundred newspapers, possessing great fortune and wide influence, was being interviewed. He had begun in poverty, had toiled the upward road, and had won the summit of wealth and honor. The interviewer asked him to name the maxim that had been of most value to him in his life. His answer was to quote an old saying by Pascal, 4 'To foresee is to rule." An example of his foresight was his recognition of a coming scarcity, if not a famine, in the paper industry. Also he saw how the War might cut off supplies from sources then being heavily drawn upon. He purchased a tract of woodland embracing three thousand square miles in Newfoundland and developed his own adequate paper industry. The War came, and so did the stringency in the paper market. But he was prepared. He ruled his business because he had foreseen.

It is not required of everyone to be as astute as Lord Northcliffe, or to do business on so vast a scale. But every home builder, to reach his own maximum of happiness and usefulness, must look ahead, must even take a long look ahead. And he must discipline himself to live according to the call of that distant goal. Esau was called a profane person because he did not look ahead, because a present pleasure meant more to him than future service. Many a home has been desecrated in the same spirit. Living for present ease and indulgence, rather than in view of responsibilities bound to come, responsibilities growing of necessity out of home relations, and necessary to the happiest home relations, has meant disappointment, trouble, and bitterness to many a promising home.

An ideal home is a perpetual honeymoon. At Christmas time we talk about having the Christmas spirit throughout the year. In the joy of wedding days, we exclaim, "0 that the blessedness of this time might always be in the hearts of these two!" And it may be. It was meant to be. That aspect of the way to have it so with which we are here concerned has to do with conserving the conditions which determine that blessedness. By this is meant learning to do from the beginning those things that make for mutual good will, mutual trust, mutual ministry. And what are the things that make for mutual good will, mutual trust, mutual ministry? Obviously self-denial, thoughtfulness, forethought, anticipating the other's wish and providing to meet it, getting ready for trying experiences so as to ease them as far as possible, dreaming and talking of future good to be enjoyed together. All of which means that two people who expect to live together a long time, and want to live together a long time, need, from the day they begin to live together to put into practice the virtues which common sense tells them will be needed for their comfort in later life. If these virtues are not initiated in the honeymoon, they are apt to be missing when they are most needed, in the dark of the moon.

Among the homely virtues indispensable to making life a continued love story is thrift. It may be described, for the purpose of this paragraph, as the habit of saving. The point to be here emphasized is that the habit should begin with the first breakfast in the new home. Almost everyone will agree that people ought to start the habit of saving — sometime. It is part of the urgency of this book that, to cultivate the art of living together, married people should begin their joint habit of saving at the time they are married. That is the best time to begin most things that are not easy. And saving is not easy. Like everything else hard to start, it is better begun when the feelings are warmest.