Missionaries in the Home
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and difficulties, many of which you create by exaggeration and by
talking to others.
If you should turn your attention away from outside annoyances
and center them upon your family you would be happier and would
become the means of doing good. The very fact that your children
have missed the proper counsel and example of a father renders it more
obligatory upon you to be a tender and devoted mother. Your duty is
more in your home and with your family. Here is real missionary labor
to perform. This responsibility cannot be shifted upon another; it is
the lifework God has appointed for you.
In devoting yourself so entirely to the details of business, you are
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robbing yourself of time for meditation and prayer, and are robbing
your children of the patient care and attention that they have a right
to claim from their mother. You find that you can hurry through with
many tasks yourself, easier and quicker than you can patiently teach
your children to do them for you; yet it would be much better to put
certain responsibilities upon them and instruct them to be useful. This
would encourage and occupy them, as well as relieve you in part.
You give considerable time to those who have no special claims
upon you, and in so doing you neglect the sacred duties of a mother.
God has not laid upon you many of the burdens which you have as-
sumed. You have visited and helped those who did not need your time
and care half so much as your own children, who are now forming
characters for heaven or perdition. God will not sustain you in min-
istering to many who are really suffering under the curse of God for
their dissolute and wicked lives.
The first great business of your life is to be a missionary at home.
Clothe yourself with humility and patience, forbearance and love, and
go about the work that God has ordained you should do, which no
other one can do for you. It is a work for which you will be held
responsible in the day of retribution. God’s blessing cannot rest upon
an ill-disciplined household. Kindness and patience must rule in the
home to make it happy.
From a worldly point of view, money is power; but from the Chris-
tian standpoint, love is power. Intellectual and spiritual strength are
involved in this principle. Pure love has special efficacy to do good,
and can do nothing but good. It prevents discord and misery, and
brings the truest happiness. Wealth is often an influence to corrupt