Duty of Husbands

Christ's love to his church, was DURABLE and UNCHANGEABLE. "Having loved his own he loved them to the end," without abatement or alteration. So ought men to love their wives, not only at the beginning; but to the end of their union; when the charms of beauty have fled before the withering influence of disease; when the vigorous and sprightly frame has lost its elasticity, and the step has become slow and faltering—when the wrinkles of old age have followed to the bloom of youth, and the whole person seems rather the monument, than the resemblance of what it once was. Has she not gained in mind what she has lost in exterior fascinations? Have not her mental graces flourished amid the ruins of personal charms? If the 'rose' and the 'lily' have faded on the cheek, have not the 'fruits of righteousness' grown in the soul? If those blossoms have departed, on which the eye of youthful passion gazed with so much ardor, has it not been to give way to the ripe fruit of Christian excellence? The woman is not what she once was—but the wife, the mother, the Christian—are better than they were.

For an example of marital love in all its power and excellence, point me not to the bride and bridegroom displaying during the first month of their union, all the watchfulness and tenderness of affection, but let me look upon the husband and wife of fifty, whose love has been tried by the lapse and the changes of a quarter of a century, and who through this period and by these vicissitudes, have grown in attachment and esteem; and whose affection, if not glowing with all the fervid heat of a midsummer's day, is still like the sunshine of an October noon—warm and beautiful, as reflected amid autumnal tints!

But, before I go away from this view of a husband's especial duty, I must just advert to another rule of his love which is laid down for him by the apostle. "So ought men to love their wives, as their own bodies—he who loves his wife loves himself." A man's children are parts of himself; his wife is himself—"for the two shall be one flesh." This is his duty and the measure of it too; which is so plain, that, if he understands how he treats himself, there needs nothing be added concerning his demeanor towards her; for "what mighty care does he take of his body, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils, and studies to make for it fair provisions, and is very often led by its inclinations and desires, and does never contradict its appetites but when they are evil, and then also not without some trouble and sorrow." So let a man love his wife as his own body.

Can it be necessary to apply the force of MOTIVES to produce an appropriate attention to such a duty? If so, I appeal to your sense of honor. Husbands, call to recollection the wakeful diligence, and the tender attentions by which you won the affection and the confidence of the woman, who forsook her father and her mother, and the home of her childhood, to find a resting place for her heart in your love—will you falsify the vows you pledged, and disappoint the hopes you raised? Is it accounted a disgraceful stigma on a man's reputation, to forfeit the pledges of a lover? oh! how much more dishonorable to forget those of a husband! That man has disgraced himself who furnishes just occasion to the partner of his days, to draw, with a sigh, a contrast between the affectionate attention she received as a lover and as a wife.

I urge affection to a wife by the recollection of that solemn moment, when in the presence of heaven and earth, before God's minister, and in God's house, you bound yourself by all the deeply solemn formalities of an oath, to throw open, and keep open your heart, as the fountain of her earthly happiness, and to devote your whole life to the promotion of her welfare.

I appeal to your regard to justice. You have sworn away yourself to her, and are no longer your own. You have no right to that individual, and separate, and independent kind of life, which would lead you to seek your happiness, in opposition to, or neglect of hers. "The two have become one flesh."

Humanity puts in its claim on behalf of your wife. Husbands! It is in your power to do more for your wife's happiness or misery, than any other being in the universe, but God himself. An unkind husband is a tormentor of the first class. His victim can never elude his grasp, nor go beyond the reach of his cruelty, until she is kindly released by the king of terrors, who, in this instance, becomes to her an angel of light, and conducts her to the grave as to a shelter from her oppressor. For such a woman there is no rest on earth—the destroyer of her peace has her ever in his power, for she is always in his presence, or in the fear of it; the circumstances of every place, and every day, furnish him with the occasions of cruel neglect or unkindness, and it might be fairly questioned, whether there is to be found on earth a case of greater misery, except it be that of a wretch tortured by remorse and despair, than a woman whose heart daily withers under the cold looks, the chilling words, and repulsive actions of a husband who loves her not. Such a man is a murderer, though in this world he escapes the murderer's doom; and by a refinement of cruelty, he employs years in conducting his victim to her end, by the slow process of a lingering death!

If nothing else can prevail personal interest should, for no man can hate his wife, without hating himself, for "she is his own flesh." Love, like mercy, is a double blessing; and hatred, like cruelty, is a double torment. We cannot love a worthy object without rejoicing in the reflex beams of our own affection. Next to the supreme love we cherish towards God, and which it is impossible to exercise and not hold communion in the joys of heaven, marital love is the most beatifying passion; and to transvenom this into unkindness is to open, at the very center of our soul, a source of poison, which, before it exudes to torture others, torments ourselves!

I cannot here avoid inserting the exquisite and touching appeal, which Mr. Jay puts into the lips of married women to their husbands.—"Honor us; deal kindly with us. From many of the opportunities, and means by which you procure favorable notice, we are excluded. Doomed to the shadows, few of the high places of the earth are open to us. Alternately we are adored and oppressed. From our slaves you become our tyrants. You feel our beauty, and avail yourselves of our weakness. You complain of our inferiority, but none of your behavior bids us rise. Sensibility has given us a thousand feelings, which nature has kindly denied you. Always under restraints, we have little liberty of choice. Providence seems to have been more attentive to enable us to confer happiness, than to enjoy it. Every condition has for us fresh mortifications; every relationship new sorrows. We enter social bonds; it is a system of perpetual sacrifice. We cannot give life to others without hazarding our own. We have sufferings which you do not share, cannot share. If spared, years and decays invade our charms, and much of the ardor produced by attraction departs with it. We may die. The grave covers us, and we are soon forgotten; soon are the days of your mourning ended; soon is our loss repaired; dismissed even from your speech, our name is to be heard no more—a successor may dislike it. Though the duties which we have discharged invariably, be the most important and necessary, they do not shine; they are too common to be striking—they procure no fame; the wife, the mother fills no historic page. Our privations, our confinements, our wearisome days, our interrupted, our sleepless nights, the hours we have hung in anxious watchings over your sick and dying offspring . . ."—But we forbear.