Seek a Sympathetic Ear in God alone
Pp. 33-34 Confidence is a most important duty you owe to your husband,
and secrecy is not less incumbent upon you; upon the due observance of these,
much of your happiness depends. Consult him upon every point of doubt; inform
him of every action in which he can be interested, and never, no not to
your dearest friend, expose his failings or his errors; it cannot, by
any chance, be of service - it will be productive of positive
mischief. The woman who seeks to lesson her trials by such disclosures,
will find herself fatally mistaken; she may obtain temporary relief from
the sympathy of her friend; but she will find that the trivial suspension
of pain will give strength to the disease, which will be aggravated by the
conviction that the partial ease was obtained by the breach of a positive
duty, and by the certainty that if the breach of confidence becomes known,
it will create a distrust which will be an impassable bar to happiness;
for he that has none to trust, has but little to hope; and the discovery
of such a breach of conjugal fidelity could not fail of souring his mind,
and thereby producing a host of evils. In the unhappy dissensions which
will occasionally occur, let the Deity alone be your confidant; - the outpourings
of a wounded spirit He will not disregard; and there is an unspeakable quietness
and comfort derived from unburdening the laboring bosom to such a friend
- one whom you know can direct you, and who, if you trust in him, will either
relieve you from the trial, or so compose your mind as to enable you to
bear it; this conference and confidence will indeed impart a satisfaction
which will never be regretted, and will relieve the mind much more than
communication with any earthly friend.
Devotion
P. 60 I COULD not close this little volume without a few words upon family prayer and the devotion of the closet. I could not give you directions for your general conduct in your new situation at the head of a family, without saying a few words respecting that duty which you owe to the Great Being from whom alone can come a blessing, even on the most prudent conduct. A prayerless, cannot be a happy family. Independent of the good accompanying the exercises of devotion, when blest by the immediate influences of the Spirit of God, of how much practical benefit is even the mere habit of family and private prayer the source. What a check is the former to poor human nature; for how could you publicly and daily, before your servants, humble yourself before God-bewail your sins of omission and of commission - ask for his Spirit to be with you, to guide you into all good, and to deliver you from evil-to enable you to subdue the man of sin which is within you, and to control the natural impetuosity of your temper - how could you, I say, thus worship God at the family altar, and live in the habitual exercise of tyranny over your servants, of pride in your ordinary relations, or in the commission of any open immorality: and when you retire to your closet - when the whole soul is (in words) laid bare before God - when you call over, at the end of each day the secret sins by which it has been sullied, the errors of thought, as well as of conduct - when you entreat his forgiveness and ask his blessing- how, I say, can this be persevered in, without your manifesting a desire to observe his laws and be guided by his will, and exhibiting that desire, by striving against, and not indulging in, any secret sin?
Beauty
Pp. 262-263 What I believe, is this. That in falling, with our first parents, we fall physically as well as morally; and that our physical departure from truth is almost as wide as our moral. I suppose all the ugliness of the young - not, of course, all their variety of feature or complexion, but all which constitutes real ugliness of appearance - comes directly or indirectly from the transgression of God's laws, natural or moral; and can only be restored by obedience to those laws by the transgression of which it came.