The course here suggested does not imply independent investigation, without aid from men of learning and piety. Every doctrine of theology, and every antagonistic mode of Biblical interpretation, has been sustained by such men. But with a reference Bible and Concordance, any woman of ordinary capacity can collect all that the Bible contains on a given topic, and form a decision as to which view has the most evidence in its favor. Then she can learn what has been offered both for and against this view. This having been done with a prayerful spirit, the result will rarely fail in bringing satisfaction and peace; while both intellectually and morally such exercises will have an elevating tendency.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CARE OF SERVANTS.
In the chapter on the Right Use of Time and Property, the important explanation was made of the great law of love to God and to our neighbor, which includes in its aim and spirit all other laws. The distinction is there exhibited between instinctive emotional love, caused by agreeable qualities in persons and things, and the voluntary love which is “good-will” toward God and man on the best and most extensive scale. This love is identified in the great command itself by the expression “as thyself.” For the love of self is not pleasure created by our own agreeable qualities. It rather is the all-controlling desire to make self happy. For this end we are required to obey the laws of God, and thus secure the best and highest happiness both to ourselves and to our neighbors.
In addition to this supreme law, made clear both by the intuitive principle of mind and in the revealed laws of the Old Testament, we have the teachings of Jesus Christ as to the character of God as a loving Father to all his creatures. And, what is especially to be regarded in estimating the obligations of a housekeeper to her servants, we are taught that our heavenly Father feels the most care and interest in those of his children who are the most ignorant, the most neglected, and the most sinful. As the loving parent gives the most thought and tender care to the most feeble and imperfect child, so the Father of All most anxiously cares for the weak, the ignorant, and the wandering of mankind.
Few of Christ’s professed followers at the present day realize what obligations they assume when they prepare large houses and establishments, which bring the most neglected members of society under their care as members of the family state.
Did they understand the sacred obligations thus assumed to train the humble members of their family with the care and Christian love taught by both the precept and example of our Divine Lord, it is probable most would reduce their style of living, so that their own children, with one or two of God’s most neglected ones, would embrace all for whom they would dare to assume such obligations.
The preceding presents the general principles to guide a housekeeper as to her duty in the care of servants. The following will suggest important details and considerations. Those in quotation-marks are from Mrs. Stowe’s “House and Home Papers.”
“Although in earlier ages the highest-born, wealthiest, and proudest ladies were skilled in the simple labors of the household, the advance of society toward luxury has changed all this, especially in lands of aristocracy and classes; and at the present time America is the only country where there is a class of women who may be described as ladies who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New.
“The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society, a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.