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The Adventist Home
The precious grace of God is made secondary to matters of no
real importance; and many, while collecting material for enjoyment,
lose the capacity for happiness. They find that their possessions fail
to give the satisfaction they had hoped to derive from them. This
endless round of labor, this unceasing anxiety to embellish the home
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for visitors and strangers to admire, never pays for the time and means
thus expended. It is placing upon the neck a yoke of bondage grievous
to be borne
Two Visits are Contrasted—In some families there is too much
done. Neatness and order are essential to comfort, but these virtues
should not be carried to such an extreme as to make life a period of
unceasing drudgery and to render the inmates of the home miserable.
In the houses of some whom we highly esteem, there is a stiff precision
about the arrangement of the furniture and belongings that is quite
as disagreeable as a lack of order would be. The painful propriety
which invests the whole house makes it impossible to find there that
rest which one expects in the true home.
It is not pleasant, when making a brief visit to dear friends, to see
the broom and the duster in constant requisition, and the time which
you had anticipated enjoying with your friends in social converse spent
by them in a general tidying up and peering into corners in search of
a concealed speck of dust or a cobweb. Although this may be done
out of respect to your presence in the house, yet you feel a painful
conviction that your company is of less consequence to your friends
than their ideas of excessive neatness.
In direct contrast to such homes was one that we visited during the
last summer [1876]. Here the few hours of our stay were not spent
in useless labor or in doing that which could be done as well at some
other time, but were occupied in a pleasant and profitable manner,
restful alike to mind and body. The house was a model of comfort,
although not extravagantly furnished. The rooms were all well lighted
and ventilated, ... which is of more real value than the most costly
adornments. The parlors were not furnished with that precision which
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is so tiresome to the eye, but there was a pleasing variety in the articles
of furniture.
8
The Signs of the Times, October 2, 1884
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