| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 7 |
Page 3 |
But we are not good Christians until we have learned to live Christianly in relations. For example, in the family. A true marriage means the ultimate bringing of two lives into such perfect one-ness that there shall not be a discord in the blended music. “They twain shall be one.” To attain this each must give up much. Neither can move on independently of the other, without thought or without self-forgetfulness. The relation is not that of master and slave, but that of love. There must be on part of both, self-repression, and self-renunciation. The aim of each must be – what always is true love’s aim – to serve the other, the deeper love to serve the more deeply. Only in perfect love, which is utterly self-forgetful, can there be perfect blending of lives.
Then as a family grows up in the home, it is harder still to keep the music without dissonance, with the varying individual tastes and preferences, which are disposed to assert themselves often in aggressive ways. Only keeping love always the ruling motive can do it. But there are families that never do learn to live together lovingly. Oftentimes the harmony is spoiled by one member of the household who will not yield to the sway of unselfishness nor repress and deny self for the good of all. On the other hand, in homes that do grow into the ripeness of love, there is oftentimes one life that by its calm, true, serene peace, which nothing can disturb, at length draws all the discordant elements of the household life into accord with itself and so perfects the music of the home. It takes but little things to mar the music; and it takes but the little things of love, the amenities, the thoughtfulness, the words in season, the gentle acts of common kindness, to make home’s music almost divinely sweet. Says George MacDonald:–
“Alas! How easily things go wrong;
A sigh too much or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Alas! How hardly things go right!
‘Tis hard to watch on a summer’s night,
For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay,
And the summer’s night is a winter’s day.
And yet how easily things go right,
If the sigh and the kiss of the winter’s night
Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray
That is born in the light of the winter’s day.
And things can never go badly wrong
If the heart be true and the love be strong;
For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain
Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.”
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