Chapter 118—Sympathy at Home
Dear Brother and Sister C,
Your cases have been brought before me in vision. As I viewed
your lives, they appeared to be a terrible mistake. Brother C, you have
not a happy temperament. And not being happy yourself, you fail to
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make others happy. You have not cultivated affection, tenderness, and
love. Your wife has suffered all through her married life for sympathy.
Your married life has been very much like a desert—but very few green
spots to look back upon with grateful remembrance. It need not have
been thus.
Love can no more exist without revealing itself in outward acts
than fire can be kept alive without fuel. You, Brother C, have felt
that it was beneath your dignity to manifest tenderness by kindly acts,
and to watch for an opportunity to evince affection for your wife by
words of tenderness and kind regard. You are changeable in your
feelings, and are very much affected by surrounding circumstances.
You have not felt that it was wrong, displeasing to God, to allow
your mind to be fully engrossed with the world, and then bring your
worldly perplexities into your family, thus letting the adversary into
your home. It is very easy for you thus to open the door, but you will
find it not so easy to close; it will be very difficult to turn out the enemy
when once you have brought him in. Leave your business cares and
perplexities and annoyances when you leave your business. Come to
your family with a cheerful countenance, with sympathy, tenderness,
and love. This will be better than expending money for medicines or
physicians for your wife. It will be health to the body and strength to
the soul. Your lives have been very wretched. You have both acted
a part in making them so. God is not pleased with your misery; you
have brought it upon yourselves by want of self-control.
You let feelings bear sway. You think it beneath your dignity,
Brother C, to manifest love, to speak kindly and affectionately. All
these tender words, you think, savor of softness and weakness, and are
unnecessary. But in their place come fretful words, words of discord,
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