Part 26

FAMILY QUARRELS.

How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave in the cemetery.

THE ROTHSCHILDS.

If you only knew it, your interests are identical. Of all the families of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about him, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise that they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction, they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the raising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen. That illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes, a united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude of dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling! Sister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will lovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous disaster strike.

THE FAMILY BOND.

When father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have not already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the only ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same cradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled for by the same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of all the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and prosperity--I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother will see that the sister never wants an escort.

Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and damning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would hardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest prayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of the world, and the brother flee off in another direction in dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at the iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living together for years, very often do not know each other, and that they see only the imperfections and none of the virtues!

A RUSSIAN BANQUET.

General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry, had in early life wandered off in the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited a plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted, came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had two brothers and a sister. "No other brothers?" "My younger brother went off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger brother whom he thought was dead." And how loud was the cheer, and how warm was the embrace!

Brother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other as they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud and unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some woman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man. That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in June. Come, let me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam." "Miriam, this is Moses." Add seventy-five per cent to your present appreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.

BE AGREEABLE.

Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible, remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into the battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on paths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through shadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the journey be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's knee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall welcome us home, as we say: "Father and mother, we have come, and brought our children with us." The old revival hymn described it with glorious repetition:

"Brothers and sisters there will meet, Brothers and sisters there will meet, Brothers and sisters there will meet, Will meet to part no more."

I read of a child in the country who was detained at a neighbor's house on a stormy night by some fascinating stories that were being told him, and then looked out and saw it was so dark he did not dare go home. The incident impressed me the more because in my childhood I had much, the same experience. The boy asked his comrades to go with him, but they dared not. It got later and later--seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock. "Oh," he said, "I wish I were home!" As he opened the door the last time a blinding flash of the storm and a deafening roar overcame him. But after a while he saw in the distance a lantern, and lo! his brother was coming to fetch him home, and the lad stepped out and with swift feet hastened on to his brother who took him home, where they were so glad to greet him, and for a long time supper had been waiting. So may it be when the night of death comes and our earthly friends cannot go with us, and we dare not go alone; may our Brother, our Elder Brother, our Friend closer than a brother, come out to meet us with the light of the promises, which shall be a lantern to our feet, and then we will go in to join our loved ones waiting for us, supper all ready, the marriage supper of the Lamb!

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

"Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me."--LUKE 10:40.

Yonder is a beautiful village homestead. The man of the house is dead and his widow is taking charge of the premises. This is the widow Martha of Bethany. Yes, I will show you also the pet of the household. This is Mary, the youngest sister, with a book under her arm, and her face having no appearance of anxiety or perturbation. Company has come. Christ stands outside the door and, of course, there is a good deal of excitement inside the door. The disarranged furniture is hastily put aside, and the hair is brushed back, and the dresses are adjusted as well as, in so short a time, Mary and Martha can attend to these matters.

THE WELCOME TO CHRIST.

They did not keep Christ standing at the door until they were newly appareled, or until they had elaborately arranged their tresses, then coming out with their affected surprise as though they had not heard the two or three previous knockings, saying: "Why, is that you?" No. They were ladies, and were always presentable, although they may not have always had on their best, for none of us always have on our best; if we did our best would not be worth having on. They throw open the door and greet Christ. They say: "Good morning, Master; come in and be seated."

Christ did not come alone; He had a group of friends with Him, and such an influx of city visitors would throw any country home into perturbation. I suppose also the walk from the city had been a good appetizer. The kitchen department that day was a very important department, and I suppose that Martha had no sooner greeted the guests than she fled to that room. Mary had no anxiety about household affairs. She had full confidence that Martha could get up the best dinner in Bethany. She seems to say: "Now, let us have a division of labor. Martha, you cook and I'll sit down and be good."

DIFFERENCE IN SISTERS.

So you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. There is Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive of some new pastry, or discovering something in the art of cooking and housekeeping. There is Mary, also, fond of conversation, literary, so engaged in deep questions of ethics she has no time to attend to the questions of household welfare. It is noon. Mary is in the parlor with Christ. Martha is in the kitchen. It would have been better if they had divided the work, and then they could have divided the opportunity of listening to Jesus; but Mary monopolizes Christ, while Martha swelters at the fire.

TROUBLE IN THE KITCHEN.

It was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that day. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a repast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen. Perhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or Martha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only to have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting the proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with pitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: "Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?"

Christ scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have his scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He knew Martha had almost worked herself to death to get Him something to eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as He seems to say: "My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit down on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful." As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a great many household perplexities and anxieties.

NON-APPRECIATION.

First, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange, they say when they get home: "Oh, you ought to be in our factory a little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!" Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a library, while she is health officer, police and president of her realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed to the utmost.

I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit in an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household. Those are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great mass of housekeepers--the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at thirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look as though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were sixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great Armageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see that the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those tombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: "Here lies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle."