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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
If things around them are not as agreeable as she could wish (as they
will not always be), she should not indulge homesick feelings, or by
lack of cheerfulness and by spoken complaints harass the husband and
make his task harder, and perhaps by her discontent draw him from
the place where he could do good. She should not divert the interest
of her husband from laboring for the salvation of souls, to sympathize
with her ailments and gratify her whimsical, discontented feelings. If
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she would forget herself and labor to help others, talk and pray with
poor souls, and act as if their salvation was of higher importance than
any other consideration, she would have no time to be homesick. She
would feel from day to day a sweet satisfaction as a reward for her
unselfish labor; I cannot call it sacrifice, for some of our ministers’
wives do not know what it is to sacrifice or suffer for the truth’s sake.
In former years the wives of ministers endured want and perse-
cution. When their husbands suffered imprisonment, and sometimes
death, those noble, self-sacrificing women suffered with them, and
their reward will be equal to that bestowed on the husband. Mrs.
Boardman and the Mrs. Judsons suffered for the truth, suffered with
their companions. They sacrificed home and friends in every sense of
the word to aid their companions in the work of enlightening those
who sat in darkness, to reveal to them the hidden mysteries of the word
of God. Their lives were in constant peril. To save souls was their
great object, and for this they could suffer cheerfully.
I was shown the life of Christ. When His self-denial and sacrifice
is compared with the trials and sufferings of the wives of some of our
ministers, it causes anything which they may call sacrifice to sink into
insignificance. If the minister’s wife speaks words of discontent and
discouragement, the influence upon the husband is disheartening and
tends to cripple him in his labor, especially if his success depends
upon surrounding influences. Must the minister of God in such cases
be crippled or torn from his field of labor to gratify the feelings of his
wife, which arise from an unwillingness to yield inclination to duty?
The wife should conform her wishes and pleasures to duty, and give
up her selfish feelings for the sake of Christ and the truth. Satan has
had much to do with controlling the labors of the ministers through
the influence of selfish, ease-loving companions.
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If a minister’s wife accompanies her husband in his travels, she
should not go for her own special enjoyment, to visit, and to be waited