256. The Queens of Home

The Queens of Home

Sol. Son_6:8 : ’93There are three-score queens.’94

So Solomon, by one stroke, set forth the imperial character of a true Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a subordinate, but a queen. In a former sermon I showed you that crown and courtly attendants and imperial wardrobe were not necessary to make a queen; but that graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman. I showed you at some length that woman’92s position was higher in the world than man’92s, and that although she had often been denied the right of suffrage, she always did vote and always would vote by her influence, and that her chief desire ought to be that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she has already won. I began an enumeration of some of her rights, and now I resume the subject.

In the first place, woman has the special and the superlative right’97of blessing and comforting the sick. What land, what street, what house, has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of sickbeds! What shall we do with them? Shall man, with his rough hand and clumsy foot, go stumbling around the sick-room, trying to soothe the distracted nerves and alleviate the pains of the distressed patient? The young man at college may scoff at the idea of being under maternal influences; but at the first blast of typhoid fever on his cheek, he says, ’93Where is mother?’94 Walter Scott wrote partly in satire and partly in compliment:

O woman, in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy and hard to please;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou.

I think the most pathetic passage in all the Bible is the description of the lad who went out to the harvest field of Shunem and got sunstruck’97pressing his hands on his temples and crying out: ’93Oh, my head! my head!’94 And they said: ’93Carry him to his mother.’94 And then the record is: ’93He sat on her knees till noon, and then died.’94

It is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel, once in a while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their mouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn you in bed. How loudly they talk. How you long for the ministries of home. I know one such who went away from one of the brightest homes, for several weeks’92 business absence at the West. A telegram came at midnight that he was on his deathbed far away from home. By express train the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late. He feared not to die, but he was in an agony to live until his family got there. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while longer. He said: ’93I am willing to die, but not alone.’94 But the pulses fluttered, the eyes closed, and the heart stopped. The express trains met in the midnight; wife and daughters going westward’97lifeless remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad, pitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick we want to be sick at home. When the time comes for us to die we want to die at home. The room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be very plain; but who cares for that? Loving hands to bathe the temples. Loving voices to speak good cheer. Loving lips to read the comforting promises of Jesus.

In our Civil War, men cast the cannon, men fashioned the musketry, men cried to the hosts, ’93Forward, march!’94 men hurled their battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, ’93Charge! charge!’94 but woman scraped the lint, woman administered the cordials, woman watched by the dying couch, woman wrote the last message to the home circle, woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and four men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bands and triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be written anywhere, save in the chronicles of heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the Chickahominy; of Annie Ross, in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds undressed’97some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them over, those that had an arm left, waved it and filled the air with their ’93Hurrah!’94’97of Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago, with blankets and with pillows, until the men shouted, ’93Three cheers for the Christian Commission! God bless the women at home;’94 then sitting down to take the last message: ’93Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to meet me in heaven; tell her to train up the boys whom we have loved so well; tell her we shall meet again in the good land; tell her to bear my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier’94’97and of Mrs. Shelton, into whose face the convalescent soldier looked, and said: ’93Your grapes and cologne cured me.’94 And so it was also through all of our war with Spain’97women heroic on the field, braving death and wounds to reach the fallen, watching by their fever cots in the West Indian hospitals or on the troopships or in our smitten home camps. Men did their work with shot and shell and carbine and howitzer; women did their work with socks and slippers and bandages and warm drinks and Scripture texts and gentle strokings of the hot temples and stories of that land where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded and said, ’93On which side did you fight?’94 Women knelt down over the wounded and said, ’93Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for you to eat? What makes you cry?’94 To-night, while we men are sound asleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch.

Again: woman has a special right to take care of the poor. There are hundreds and thousands of them all over the land. There is a kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need to be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks would know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a dress? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little girl’92s head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man trying to gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to have come down.

O, Christian young woman! if you would make yourself happy, and win the blessing of Christ, go out among the destitute. A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry, but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty will give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, ’93Look after that woman; canopy her with your wings, and shelter her from all harm;’94 and while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the little ones around the room will whisper, ’93Who is she? Ain’92t she beautiful!’94 and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: ’93Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.’94

Can you tell me why a Christian woman, going down among the haunts of iniquity, on a Christian errand, never meets with any indignity? I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers, in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh, and I said to her as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place, ’93Do you come here nights to hold a service?’94 ’93O, yes,’94 she said. ’93Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while performing this Christian errand?’94 ’93Never,’94 she said, ’93never.’94 That young woman who has her father by her side, walking down the street, armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as that Christian woman who goes forth on Gospel work into the haunts of iniquity, carrying the Bibles and bread. God, with the red right arm of his wrath omnipotent, would tear to pieces any one who should offer indignity to her. He would smite him with lightnings and drown him with floods and swallow him with earthquakes and damn him with eternal indignations. Some one said: ’93I dislike very much to see that Christian woman teaching those bad boys in the mission school. I am afraid to have her instruct them.’94 ’93So,’94 said another man, ’93I am afraid, too.’94 Said the first: ’93I am afraid they will use vile language before they leave the place.’94 ’93Ah,’94 said the other man, ’93I am not afraid of that. What I am afraid of is, that if any of those boys should use a bad word in her presence, the other boys would tear him to pieces and kill him on the spot.’94 That woman is the best sheltered who is sheltered by the Lord God Almighty, and you need never fear going anywhere where God tells you to go.

It seems as if the Lord had ordained woman for an especial work in the solicitation of charities. Backed up by barrels in which there is no flour, and by stoves in which there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no clothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to her: ’93You go into that bank or store or shop and get the money.’94 She goes in and gets it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She could not help but get it. It is decreed from eternity she should get it. No need of your turning your back and pretending you don’92t hear; you do hear. There is no need of your saying you are begged to death. There is no need of your wasting your time, and you might as well submit first as last. You had better right away take down your checkbook, mark the number of the check, fill up the blank, sign your name, and hand it to her. There is no need of wasting time. Those poor children on the back street have been hungry long enough. That sick man must have some farina. That consumptive must have something to ease his cough. I meet this delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of such a hard-fisted man, and I say: ’93Did you get the money?’94 ’93Of course,’94 she says, ’93I got the money; that’92s what I went for. The Lord told me to go in and get it, and he never sends me on a fool’92s errand.’94

’93Again: I have to tell you that it is a woman’92s specific right to comfort under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel; but all profane as well as sacred history attests that when the crisis comes she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency. How often you have seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of frivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to a heroine. Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never tell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great loss to their store, or some of their companions in business play them a sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He is asked in the household again and again: What is the matter? But he believes it a sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul. Oh, sir! your first duty was to tell your wife all about it. She, perhaps might not have disentangled your finances, or extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is intended for two. Business men know what I mean. There came a crisis in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while there came a day when you said, ’93Here I shall have to stop;’94 and you called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in your employ, and you said: ’93We have got to stop.’94 You left the store suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the street and over on the ferryboat. You felt everybody would be looking at you and blaming you and denouncing you. You hastened home. You told your wife all about the affair. What did she say? Did she play the butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and the ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She quailed not under the stroke. She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and wear the old cloak another winter. She was the one who understood your affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak woman’92s arm holding you up; but while you looked at that arm, there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. You said: ’93Well, this is the happiest clay of my life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don’92t care’97I don’92t care.’94 At the moment you were exhausted, God sent a Deborah to meet the host of the Amalekites and scatter them like chaff over the plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels, and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their Christian powers. What grand and glorious things they could do if they only had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any such time. A crisis will come in your affairs. There will be a Thermopylae in your own household where God will tell you to stand. There are scores and hundreds of households today where as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by Grace Darling or Marie Antoinette or Joan of Arc.

Again: I remark it is woman’92s right to bring us the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man. Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the pleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she can more easily become a Christian, I prove by the statement that three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this world back to God. I may stand here and say the soul is immortal. There is a man who will deny it. I may stand here and say we are lost and undone without Christ. There is a man who will contradict it. I may stand here and say there will be a judgment day after a while. Yonder is some one who will dispute it. But a Christian woman in a Christian household, living in the faith and the consistency of Christ’92s gospel’97nobody can refute that. The greatest sermons are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent, consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of God’92s truth.

A sailor came slipping down the ratlines one night, as though something had happened, and the sailors cried: ’93What’92s the matter?’94 He said: ’93My mother’92s prayers haunt me like a ghost.’94 Home influences, consecrated Christian home influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There are men who have maintained their integrity, not because they were any better naturally than some other people, but because there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge in African jungles, they may flee to the earth’92s end’97they cannot go so far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.

Speak to women who have the eternal salvation of their husbands in their right hand. On the marriage day you took an oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but after that parting at the grave, will it be an eternal separation? Is there any such thing as an immortal marriage, making the flowers that grow on the top of the sepulcher brighter than the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma? Yes; I stand here as an ambassador of the most high God, to proclaim the banns of an immortal union for all those who join hands in the grace of Christ. O woman, is your husband, your father, your son, away from God? The Lord demands their redemption at your hands. There are prayers for you to offer, there are exhortations for you to give, there are examples for you to set, and I say now, as Paul said to the Corinthian woman: ’93What knowest thou, but thou shalt save thy husband?’94 A man was dying; and he said to his wife: ’93Rebecca, you wouldn’92t let me have family prayers; you laughed about all that, and you got me away into worldliness; and now I’92m going to die, and my fate is sealed, and you are the cause of my ruin?’94 O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband?

Are there not some of you who have kindly influences at home? Are there not some who have wandered far away from God, who can remember the Christian influences in their early home? Do not despise those influences, my brother. If you die without Christ what will you do with your mother’92s prayers, with your wife’92s importunities, with your sister’92s entreaties? What will you do with the letters they used to write to you, with the memory of those days when they attended you so kindly in times of sickness? Oh, if there be just one strand holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like to take hold of that strand now and pull you to the beach! For the sake of your wife’92s God, for the sake of your mother’92s God, for the sake of your daughter’92s God, for the sake of your sister’92s God, come this day and be saved.

Lastly: I wish to say that one of the specific rights of woman is, through the grace of Christ, finally to reach heaven. Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven! Mary, Christ’92s mother, in heaven, Elizabeth Fry in heaven, Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven, the mother of Augustine in heaven, the Countess of Huntingdon’97who sold her splendid jewels to build chapels’97in heaven, while a great many others, who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little, have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest! What a change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window (the glass broken out), and the aching side and worn-out eyes, to the ’93house of many mansions!’94 No more stitching until twelve o’92clock at night, no more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work, to show it was not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last! Heaven for aching heads! heaven for broken hearts! heaven for anguish-bitten frames! No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering steps! No more rough blows across the temples! No more sharp, keen, bitter curses!

Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil and struggle and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your door fighting back the wolf with your own hand, red with carnage. But God has a crown for you. I want you to realize this morning that he is now making it, and whenever you weep a tear, he sets another gem in that crown; whenever you have a pang of body or soul, he puts another gem in that crown; until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for another splendor, and God will say to his angel, ’93The crown is done; let her up, that she may wear it.’94 And as the Lord of Righteousness puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, ’93Who is she?’94 and Christ will say, ’93I will tell you who she is. She is the one that came up out of great tribulation, and had her robe washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94 And then God will spread a banquet, and he will invite all the principalities of heaven to sit at the feast, and the tables will blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God and crimson with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life, and waters from the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards, and the old harpers of heaven will sit there, making music with their harps, and Christ will point you out, amid the celebrities of heaven, saying: ’93She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified together.’94 And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace, will break forth with congratulation: ’93Hail! hail!’94 And there will be handwritings on the wall’97not such as struck the Babylonian noblemen with horror’97but fire-tipped fingers, writing in blazing capitals of light and love, ’93God hath wiped away all tears from all faces!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage