24
Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce
that if you pursue the course your own temperament would lead you
to do, you will not inspire in the heart of your wife love, but will wean
her affections from you, and she will in the end despise that authority,
the power of which she has never felt before in her married life. You
are certainly making hard and bitter work for yourself, and you will
reap what you are sowing.
A Mother’s Responsibility to Her Child—I dare not do other-
[31]
wise than speak to you plainly. The case demands it. How is the
marriage of Sister Drake to you improving her condition? Not a whit;
but your course is making her life a bitterness, her lot almost unbear-
able. I knew how it would be as soon as I heard of your marriage.
She thought she was to have one to help her take care of her boy, but
you would tear the mother from her son, and require her to yield her
parental care and affection for her son to you who have only your
marriage to plead why this should be so. You have done nothing to
earn this great sacrifice. You have not pursued a course to even gain
her confidence. Yet you demand this great sacrifice, the separation
of the mother from her son. You may plead that you understand the
case, while we plead [that] you know but little about it. Instead of your
feeling it to be your duty to be patient and affectionate, and judiciously
manage the case of this her son, you take a course that a heartless,
unfeeling tyrant would pursue.
I would advise the mother to move in the fear of God and not allow
a comparative stranger to come in, claiming the title of husband, and
separate her child from her affection and care. God has not released
that mother from her responsibility because she has married you. You
do not possess true love. You are not acquainted with the pure article.
If you were, you would never have pursued the course you have.—
Letter 4, 1870
.