260
The Adventist Home
vating the patience, kindness, and forbearance that should ever exist
between husband and wife. Neither of you should set up your own
will and try to carry out your individual ideas and plans whatever the
consequences may be. Neither of you should be determined to do
as you please. Let the softening, subduing influence of the Spirit of
God work upon your hearts and fit you for the work of training your
children.... Appeal to your heavenly Father to keep you from yielding
to the temptation to speak in an impatient, harsh, willful manner to
each other, the husband to the wife, and the wife to the husband. Both
of you have imperfect characters. Because you have not been under
God’s control, your conduct toward each other has been unwise.
I beseech you to bring yourselves under God’s control. When
tempted to speak provokingly, refrain from saying anything. You will
be tempted on this point because you have never overcome this objec-
[343]
tionable trait of character. But every wrong habit must be overcome.
Make a complete surrender to God. Fall on the Rock, Christ Jesus, and
be broken. As husband and wife, discipline yourselves. Go to Christ
for help. He will willingly supply you with His divine sympathy, His
free grace....
Repent before God for your past course. Come to an understanding,
and reunite as husband and wife. Put away the disagreeable, unhappy
experience of your past life. Take courage in the Lord. Close the
windows of the soul earthward, and open them heavenward. If your
voices are uplifted in prayer to heaven for light, the Lord Jesus, who
is light and life, peace and joy, will hear your cry. He, the Sun of
Righteousness, will shine into the chambers of your mind, lighting up
the soul temple. If you welcome the sunshine of His presence into
your home, you will not utter words of a nature to cause feelings of
unhappiness
To a Hopelessly Mistreated Wife—I have received your letter,
and in reply to it I would say, I cannot advise you to return to D unless
you see decided changes in him. The Lord is not pleased with the
ideas he has had in the past of what is due to a wife.... If [he] holds to
his former views, the future would be not better for you than the past
has been. He does not know how to treat a wife.
6
Letter 47, 1902
.