78
The Adventist Home
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.... 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,
strife, and censure....
[112]
You have not the elements of a contented spirit. You dwell upon
your troubles; imaginary want and poverty far ahead stare you in the
face; you feel afflicted, distressed, agonized; your brain seems on fire,
your spirits depressed. You do not cherish love to God and gratitude
of heart for all the blessings which your kind heavenly Father has
bestowed upon you. You see only the discomforts of life. A worldly
insanity shuts you in like heavy clouds of thick darkness. Satan exults
over you because you will have misery when peace and happiness are
at your command
Mutual Love and Forbearance Rewarded—Without mutual for-
bearance and love no earthly power can hold you and your husband
in the bonds of Christian unity. Your companionship in the marriage
relation should be close and tender, holy and elevated, breathing a
spiritual power into your lives, that you may be everything to each
other that God’s word requires. When you reach the condition that the
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Testimonies For The Church 1, 695-697
.