I.
THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY.
IT is the aim of this volume to elevate both the honor and the
remuneration of all employments that sustain the many difficult and
varied duties of the family state, and thus to render each department of
woman's profession as much desired and respected as are the most honored
professions of men.
What, then, is the end designed by the family state which Jesus
Christ came into this world to secure?
It is to provide for the training of our race to the highest
possible intelligence, virtue, and happiness, by means of the
self-sacrificing labors of the wise and good, and this with chief
reference to a future immortal existence.
The distinctive feature of the family is self-sacrificing labor of
the stronger and wiser members to raise the weaker and more ignorant to
equal advantages. The father undergoes toil and self-denial to provide a
home, and then the mother becomes a self-sacrificing laborer to train
its inmates. The useless, troublesome infant is served in the humblest
offices; while both parents unite in training it to an equality with
themselves in every advantage. Soon the older children become helpers to
raise the younger to a level with their own. When any are sick, those
who are well become self-sacrificing ministers. When the parents are old
and useless, the children become their self-sacrificing servants.
Thus the discipline of the family state is one of daily
self-devotion of the stronger and wiser to elevate and support the
weaker members. Nothing could be more contrary to its first principles
than for the older and more capable children to combine to secure to
themselves the highest advantages, enforcing the drudgeries on the
younger, at the sacrifice of their equal culture.
Jesus Christ came to teach the fatherhood of God and consequent
brotherhood of man. He came as the "first-born Son" of God and the Elder
Brother of man, to teach by example the self-sacrifice by which the
great family of man is to be raised to equality of advantages as
children of God. For this end, he "humbled himself" from the highest to
the lowest place. He chose for his birthplace the most despised village;
for his parents the lowest in rank; for his trade, to labor with his
hands as a carpenter, being "subject to his parents" thirty years. And,
what is very
significant, his trade was that which prepares the family home, as if he
would teach that the great duty of man is labor--to provide for and
train weak and ignorant creatures. Jesus Christ worked with his hands
nearly thirty years, and preached less than three. And he taught that
his kingdom is exactly opposite to that of the world, where all are
striving for the highest positions. "Whoso will be great shall be your
minister, and whoso will be chiefest shall be servant of all."
The family state then, is the aptest earthly illustration of the
heavenly kingdom, and in it woman is its chief minister. Her great
mission is self-denial, in training its members to self-sacrificing
labors for the ignorant and weak: if not her own children, then the
neglected children of her Father in heaven. She is to rear all under her
care to lay up treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. All the pleasures
of this life end here; but those who train immortal minds are to reap
the fruit of their labor through eternal ages.
To man is appointed the out-door labor--to till the earth, dig the
mines, toil in the foundries, traverse the ocean, transport merchandise,
labor in manufactories, construct houses, conduct civil, municipal, and
state affairs, and all the heavy work, which, most of the day, excludes
him from the comforts of a home. But the great stimulus to all these
toils, implanted in the heart of every true man, is the desire for a
home of his own, and the hopes of paternity. Every man who truly lives
for immortality responds to the beatitude, "Children are a heritage from
the Lord: blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them!" The
more a father and mother live under the influence of that "immortality
which Christ hath brought to light," the more is the blessedness of
rearing a family understood and appreciated. Every child trained aright
is to dwell forever in exalted bliss with those that gave it life and
trained it for heaven.
The blessed privileges of the family state are not confined to those
who rear children of their own. Any woman who can earn a livelihood, as
every woman should be trained to do, can take a properly qualified
female associate, and institute a family of her own, receiving to its
heavenly influences the orphan, the sick, the homeless, and the sinful,
and by motherly devotion train them to follow the self-denying example
of Christ, in educating his earthly children for true happiness in this
life and for his eternal home.
And such is the blessedness of aiding to sustain a truly Christian
home, that no one comes so near the pattern of the All-perfect One as
those who might hold what men call a higher place, and yet humble
themselves to the lowest in order to aid in training the young, "not as
men-pleasers, but as servants to Christ, with good-will doing service as
to the Lord, and not to men." Such are preparing for high places in the
kingdom of heaven. "Whosoever will be chiefest among you, let him be
your servant."
It is often the case that the true humility of Christ is not
understood. It was not in having a low opinion of his own character and
claims, but it was in taking a low place in order to raise others to a
higher. The worldling seeks to raise himself and family to an equality
with others, or, if possible, a superiority to them. The true follower
of Christ comes down in order to elevate others.
The maxims and institutions of this world have ever been
antagonistic to the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. Men toil for
wealth, honor, and power, not as means for raising others to an equality
with themselves, but mainly for earthly, selfish advantages. Although
the experience of this life shows that children brought up to labor have
the fairest chance for a virtuous and prosperous life, and for hope of
future eternal blessedness, yet it is the aim of most parents who can do
so, to lay up wealth that their children need not labor with the hands
as Christ did.
And although exhorted by our Lord not to lay up treasure on earth, but
rather the imperishable riches which are gained in toiling to train the
ignorant and reform the sinful, as yet a large portion of the professed
followers of Christ, like his first disciples, are "slow of heart to
believe."
Not less have the sacred ministries of the family state been
undervalued and warred upon in other directions; for example, the Romish
Church has made celibacy a prime virtue, and given its highest honors to
those who forsake the family state as ordained by God. Thus came great
communities of monks and nuns, shut out from the love and labors of a
Christian home; thus, also, came the monkish systems of education,
collecting the young in great establishments away from the watch and
care of parents, and the healthful and self-sacrificing labors of a
home. Thus both religion and education have conspired to degrade the
family state.
Still more have civil laws and social customs been opposed to the
principles of Jesus Christ. It has ever been assumed that the learned,
the rich, and the powerful are not to labor with the hands, as Christ
did, and as Paul did when he would "not eat any man's bread for naught,
but wrought with labor, not because we have not power" [to live without
hand-work,] "but to make ourselves an example." (2 Thess. 3.)
Instead of this, manual labor has been made dishonorable and
unrefined by being forced on the ignorant and poor. Especially has the
most important of all hand-labor, that which sustains the family, been
thus disgraced; so that to nurse young children, and provide the food of
a family by labor, is deemed the lowest of all positions in honor and
profit, and the last resort of poverty. And so our Lord, who himself
took the form of a servant, teaches, "How hardly shall they that have
riches enter the kingdom of heaven!"--that kingdom in which all are
toiling
to raise the weak, ignorant, and sinful to such equality with themselves
as the children of a loving family enjoy. One mode in which riches have
led to antagonism with the true end of the family state is in the style
of living, by which the hand-labor, most important to health, comfort,
and beauty, is confined to the most ignorant and neglected members of
society, without any effort being made to raise them to equal advantages
with the wise and cultivated.
And, the higher civilization has advanced, the mor- have children
been trained to feel that to labor, as did Christ and Paul, is
disgraceful, and to be made the portion of a degraded class. Children of
the rich grow up with the feeling that servants are to work for them,
and they themselves are not to work. To the minds of most children and
servants, "to be a lady," is almost synonymous with "to be waited on,
and do no work." It is the earnest desire of the authors of this volume
to make plain the falsity of this growing popular feeling, and to show
how much happier and more efficient family life will become when it is
strengthened, sustained, and adorned by family work.
[Illustration: An illustration of a house in the countryside with a
cross displayed proudly over the front door. A number of people are
working in the gardens in front of the house.]
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