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CHAPTER XI.

THE CHRISTIAN WIFE AND HEATHEN

HUSBAND.

"However inclination or convenience may promote, or rank or fortune adorn, your marriage, if the approving presence of God be not sought, if the Lord Jesus Christ be not a bidden and a welcome guest, there is no lesser power, no mortal agency, which can turn the bitter waters of this world's trials into wine."- BLUNT.

Ir is obvious, from the preceding remarks, that the disparity of religion must have involved the Christian wife in the most painfully conflicting difficulties. If, even in a Christian household, its daily cares, its minor and seemingly unimportant details, constitute one of the tests of female equanimity, prudence, and cheerful reliance on God, we must add to these, and many more, trials which our improved condition does not enable us to appreciate,the never-ending and accumulated amount of

suffering endured by the early followers of the Gospel.

Setting aside the wife's deep anxiety about the spiritual welfare of her husband and her household, living in declared enmity to the one true God, the difficulty of maintaining her own Christian consistency, and cherishing the feelings and habits of religion in her children, —what lingering heart-burnings must she have endured, what woundings of conscience, what silent throes, what anguish of spirit-known only to the great Searcher of hearts! Hers, in truth, was a dying daily unto the Lord, a species of martyrdom which, calling forth the passive rather than the active graces of the Christian character, is infinitely more difficult to sustain than those more public and triumphant exhibitions of sufferings for the Gospel, which called forth the applause of mankind, and had even here a portion of their reward.

The religion of Jesus, which was proclaimed as peace and good-will to man, was, by the natural enmity of the unrenewed heart, made to bring not peace, but a sword; it set a man at variance with his nearest kindred, and made

foes of those of his own household.

So far

from being able to unbosom her sorrows to her husband, and receiving his affectionate support and sympathy, he could not even understand her difficulties, or enter into her feelings of conscientious perplexity, when violence was done to her religious principles.

The heathens must often have marvelled at the constancy with which a frail and isolated believer was able to bear up against all their varied efforts to shake her faith. But they knew not that the "secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him," that their life is hid with Christ in God, who is ever ready to help their infirmities, and to reward every hard-fought conquest over themselves with an increased measure of faith and strength.

If, after all the differences to which this want of accordance must frequently have given rise, the husband did not dismiss his wife, it was often only to distress her by compelling her to join in heathen rites, tavern revels, and licentious songs. We have the picture of such a home scene in Tertullian: the wife is proposing to go the stations, her husband to the

bath; she to observe a fast, he to give a feast; and when she is desirous to attend the church, he always finds more than ordinary occupation for her at home. "The handmaid of God," he goes on to remark, "is obliged to live with strange household gods, to whom, at the beginning of each year and month, she must burn incense. On occasion of public festivals she has to pass through doors hung with garlands and illuminated with lanterns, as if she were coming from a place devoted to dissipation." Instead of following the example of the chaste Roman matrons, who, long after the men had adopted the custom of lying down at supper, still adhered to the antient posture of sitting, "she reclines with her husband on couches at clubs, nay, even at taverns; she, who formerly waited upon the saints, is now frequently obliged to attend upon the dissolute. Whose hand shall she solicit? out of whose goblet shall she drink? and what songs will her husband sing to her, or she to him? She may, indeed, hear the songs of the theatre or the taverns, but will they contain any allusion to God, any prayer to Christ? How, amid

such occupations, can her faith be nourished by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, or how can it be accompanied by the Divine blessing?..."

Tertullian considers even conversation with unbelievers to be dangerous, and quotes our Lord's admonition, "Cast not your pearls before swine," to enforce his argument. "Your pearls," says he, "are the ornaments of your daily conversation; the more you seek to conceal them, the more will you render yourself suspected, and the greater will be your need of caution against heathen intrusiveness. Do not fancy you are unobserved when you make the sign of the cross upon your bed and your person, when you spew out ought what is unclean, or when you arise at night to pray. Do you not think that your husband will regard all this as magic, and that he will enquire what it is that you eat in private before you partake of other food?* and when you explain it, will he believe that it is bread, and not a charm ?”

* This alludes to the consecrated bread which Christians carried home with them.