Religion in the Home : Part 2

The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book: Twelve Steps to a Happy Marriage
by Various

(Page 12 of 16)

The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at nineteen - not so young in his case, for he had already taken his doctor's degree. He told me that during the first five or six years there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter, because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He laughed aloud as he recounted this, and added, "There was never one moment when either of us regretted our marriage."

Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great novelist George Meredith, who hated priggishness in all its forms, said in a letter: "I have written always with the perception that there is no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is really the shadowy; yet that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to Nature helps to extinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through the healthy exercise of the senses."

Could there be a better description of the union of physical and spiritual development in marriage than his phrase "the complete unfolding of the creature"?

To his son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks."

What is love? From the age of six or seven on boys and girls fall in love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as well as pleasures. Many years ago a college friend of mine, a splendid fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said to a man of sixty, "Can anything be more tragic than that?"

"Yes," he replied unhesitatingly, "it is more tragic when the husband or wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage."

He was right; the loss after twenty-five years is more terrible; and in the instance I mentioned the shattered and desolated bride was in two years happily married to a second husband.

The overwhelming passion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in desire for possession as it is in consideration for the welfare of the beloved object. "Oh, how I love you!" may not mean as much as "Don't go out without your rubbers on." Do you remember that passage in Guy de Maupassant where the husband said just that to his wife? And they were astounded when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, "No one has ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on!"

Yet expressions of love and passion, embraces and caresses, are also essential. I told my students, "After you are married never leave the house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your wife." This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married happiness.

I also advised them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy the same bedroom. Quarrels and even insults given in the heat of anger are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in your hearts.

"And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love,
And kiss again with tears!"

Although happy marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of genius and the wives positively angelic.

Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the all-important question is how to obtain character.

The surest way is through religion - religion in the home. All that we know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Human imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious faith.

My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in the world.

Garden City Publishing Co. reprint edition, 1949, by special arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Copyright, 1938, by PRENTICE-HALL, INC.