Your courtship should be thoroughly open and above-board. The parents
consent should first be obtained, and remember that you are bound to
respect their wishes. Be careful also that she shall never in any way be
compromised by your conduct. I say no more because I have assumed at the
beginning that your courtship is honourable, that you love the girl of
your choice, and that as you would shield her from all injury from
others, so she will be safe under your protection. Take no ordinary
standard as the rule of your courtship, but determine from the very
beginning that it shall be so conducted, that when as man and wife you
look back upon it, it may be with feelings free from any taint of sorrow
or shame; that when you stand before God to be married it may be as
honest man and maiden, seeking for God's full blessing upon your married
life, as it has rested upon your unmarried days. One thing I would say
in conclusion, and I mention it last as being the most important, let
your choice of a wife be a subject of earnest prayer to God, and when
your choice has been made, and your love pledged one to another, let it
be a subject of mutual prayer that each may help the other to live to the
glory of God, in the station of life in which he sees fit to place you.
HUSBANDS.
The headship of a family carries with it heavy responsibilities. We may
shrink from them and avoid them, but still they remain. A good husband
and a good father makes a happy home and honest children. Drunkenness is
too often the destruction of home. If the head of the family can rule
himself in this as in other matters then he may reasonably hope for a
happy and comfortable home, but if drink is allowed to take the place of
wife or children, drink will rule the household and swallow up its peace
and prosperity. Nevertheless, drunkenness is not by any means the only
fault or indeed the beginning of the break up of a home. It is very
often the result of a home made miserable by other and easily avoided
faults. Many I suppose start their married life with the full intention
of realising their ideas of a happy home. The picture is very pleasant,
the reality is too often quite the reverse. Why? Very often because of
a want of mutual forbearance. It takes some little time really to know
one another, and unless there is a spirit of mutual forbearance the
little differences will become great quarrels. The husband is to rule,
but he is not to be a tyrant. The wife is not bound to give a blind
obedience to all his commands, and the husband is bound to respect his
wife's wishes. It ought to be a rule that in matters of importance,
where either feels it to be a question of duty, that if they cannot agree
neither should endeavour to force the other to act against their
conscience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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