Part 29

IN THE MISSION SCHOOL;

I am afraid to have her instruct them." "So," said another man, "I am afraid too." Said the first: "I am afraid they will use vile language before they leave the place." "Ah!" said the other man, "I am not afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that if any of those boys should use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him to pieces and kill him on the spot."

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, "You go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money." 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't 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 cheque-book, mark the number of the cheque, 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, "Did you get the money?" "Of course," she says, "I got the money; that's what I went for. The Lord told me to go in and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand."

III. Again I have to tell you that it is woman's 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.

There are business men here who 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, "Here I shall have to stop," and you called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in your employ, and you said, "We have got to stop." You left the store suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the street and over on the ferry-boat. 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 helped you begin to plan right away. She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak woman's 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, "Well, this is the happiest day of my life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care--I don't care."

At the moment you were utterly 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. Oh, 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 in this city to-day where as much bravery and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited by Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette, or Joan of Arc.

IV. Again, I remark, it is woman's right to

BRING TO 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.

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's truth.

A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on toward morning--one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along with you. So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or three o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened, and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they provided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down at the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian wife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all this, broke into tears, and said: "I can't stand this. Oh, what a wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the faith and hope of the Gospel.

A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something had happened, and the sailors cried, "What's the matter?" He said,

"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS

haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There are men here to-day 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 into African jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.

I stand before women this morning 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 door of 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 sepulchre brighter than the garlands which at the marriage banquet flooded the air with aroma? Yes; I stand here as a priest 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 make; and I say now, this morning, as Paul said to the Corinthian woman: "What knowest thou, O woman, but thou canst save thy husband?"

A man was dying, and he said to his wife: "Rebecca, you wouldn't let me have family prayers, and you laughed about all that, and you got me away into worldliness; and now I am going to die, and my fate is sealed, and you are

THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN."

O woman, what knowest thou but thou canst destroy thy husband? Are there not some here who have kindly influences at home--are there not some here 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's prayers, with your wife's importunities, with your sister's 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 but just one strand holding you from floating off on that dark sea, I would just like, this morning, to take hold of that strand and pull you to the beach. For the sake of your wife's God, for the sake of your mother's God, for the sake of your daughter's God, for the sake of your sister's God, come this day and be saved.