What a Young Husband Ought to Know

by Sylvanus Stall

"How many anecdotes and stories do you tell your wife to provoke a smile or a laugh? How many roses or pinks do you pin on your coat, and how many do you bring home to her? Are you careful of your own appearance in the long evenings when there is no other woman but her to be captivated by your manly charms? I am inclined to believe there is more excuse for her, if her dress has not been changed, her hair made tidy, than there is for you, most noble husband! Perhaps you never gave it a thought; but do not excuse your indifference and neglect of fond attentions, for they are just as dear to that careworn wife of yours at forty-five, or even fifty, years as at twenty-two, when you promised her that you would be true and faithful to her through life's journey. Have you honorably kept your word?

"Your answer may be: 'My wife knows I love her, and that's enough.' She may know it, but it is a pleasant thing to be assured of now and then, and if there were more everyday assurances there would be fewer careless, heart-starved wives."

It is the nature of all women to love to be wooed and won, and after marriage the same nature craves attention, tenderness, and the expression of appreciation, affection and love. No man, even if he were so sordid and selfish as to be moved by no less base or no more worthy motive than the satisfaction of his own sensual nature and consideration for his own personal comfort, could afford to withhold the expression of at least some measure of thoughtful consideration and attention. But any home in which such feelings have to be feigned, because they cannot truly be felt, is one in which commiseration and pity need to have a large place.

Should you ever note upon the part of your own wife the slightest manifestation of indifference and estrangement, put away from your lips, and even from your heart, all words of reproof and reproach, and try again the methods that enabled you to win the affections of your wife months and years ago. We grant you that there are some women who are regular Xantippes, whom no philosopher can manage, of whom we have given illustrious examples in the lives of some eminent men in the preceding volume, but let us hope that they are not numerous.

There are men, and not a few of them, we fear, who are doomed to disappointment in marriage. It does not take them long to discover the discrepancy between what they thought marriage to be and what it really is. They soon regard this union a mistake, and in a few years, and some even in a few months, denounce marriage as a failure. The truth is that the sole and only failure is found in the mistaken and unworthy views held, concerning marriage, by one or both parties to the contract. Marriage is no failure, but these men are themselves the failures. They belong to a class who hold most degraded views concerning woman and her relation to her husband in marriage. They regard woman as having been created solely to gratify the unbridled lust of man. They married with the idea that in such a union the grossest lust would have the sanction of law, and that in the marriage ceremony the wife relinquished all right to her own body, and for the satisfaction of wearing the white veil and carrying a bouquet of flowers consented to surrender to him not only her rights, but her sense of decency as well. These men who stare decency out of countenance upon the street, who lay traps for the ruin of innocent and unsuspecting girls, who invade the sanctity of home, and whose course through life is like the slimy trail of a venomous serpent, are unfit for marriage—they are unfit to be regarded even as men. No man, it matters not how full his bank account or how fine his clothes, if he holds these low views of woman and of the wife's place in the marriage relation, is worthy of a wife, for he dishonors his own mother and sisters, dishonors every right-thinking man, and his Maker as well. Any man who has in him the seeds of such unworthy sentiments may be sure that even though they may be hidden during the earlier years, they will soon grow, and hasten to a harvest of terrible fruitage.

The happiness of many homes is wrecked in the early struggle to determine whether the will of the wife or the will of the husband shall have pre-eminence. We have even heard brides boasting that in trivial matters they contended with their husbands in order to teach them from the very beginning that they did not propose to recognize any superior right in the husband to direct, or, as they said, "to boss it over them." Brides often object to the word "obey" in the marriage service, and instead of using the words "Love, honor and obey," the substitution is often made of "Love, honor and cherish," or "reverence." If the word "obey" is understood by the husband to mean imperious domination, then it had better be universally expunged. Yet, nevertheless, there is a great deal of truth in the declaration of Napoleon that he would rather have his army in command of one poor general than of two good ones. The careful execution of an ordinary plan is much better than that which comes as the result of divergent views and conflicting opinions.

In an address delivered before the First National Congress of Mothers held in Washington, Hamilton Cushing, the chief of the Ethnological Department of the Government, gave a very interesting account of the custom among the Zuni Indians, who recognize the pre-eminence of the female in everything. The men are not even allowed to hold or to have any right in property, other than through their wives, mothers or sisters. In many marriage unions the wife is easily the intellectual superior of her husband, but the universal custom among civilized nations is to recognize the husband as the head of the house. This is the Christian idea, and the plain teaching of Scripture; not, however, in that mistaken sense which is so often intended when the words are quoted: "The husband is the head of the wife." The Scriptures nowhere justify a husband in assuming imperious domination over his wife. He is "the head of the wife," but in that loving, considerate sense "even as Christ is the head of the Church." The Scriptural teaching is so important and so beautiful that we insert here, in their entirety, two of the principal selections upon this subject. That which relates to the wife we have printed in italics, and that which relates to the husband we have printed in small capitals. But to understand the relation of these two co-ordinate truths, it is necessary that the reader should note carefully the entire context. Paul, in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, from the twenty-second to the thirty-third verse, writes as follows:

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, Love Your Wives, Even as Christ also Loved the Church, and Gave Himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So Ought Men to Love their Wives as their Own Bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular So Love His Wife Even as Himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

Here is clearly and beautifully set forth the correct relative pre-eminence in the home. It is the wife recognizing the headship of her husband, as the Church recognizes the headship, leadership and authority of Christ. Upon the part of the husband, his headship is to be exercised in the spirit of that abounding love which led the Son of God to the sacrifice of Himself, both during His life and in His atoning death, for the salvation and blessing of that body of believers who constitute the Christian Church.

The teachings of Peter in his first general letter, or epistle, in the third chapter, from the first to the seventh verse, is as follows: