Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1898 — MARTHAS AND MARYS [ARTICLE]

MARTHAS AND MARYS

REV. DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON ON HOUSEHOLD CARES Martha in the Kitchen and Maryin the Parlor—The Trials,of the Good House* keeper—How They May Be Overcome —Home Influence. ’ Our Washington Pulpit. Dr. Talmage’s- sermon in Washington Sunday goes through home life with the tread of one Who has seen all its departments and sympathizes with all he sees and has words of cheer for all wives, mothers, daughters and sisters; text, Luke x., 40: “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help me.” Yonder is a beautiful viiluge 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 younger sister, with a book under her arm and her face having no appearance of anxiety or care. (Jbmpany 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. 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 has 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 anj’ country Iwme 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 worriment 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.” So you have often seen a great difference between two sisters. Mary and Martha. 'S’ There is Martha, hard working, painstaking, a good manager, ever inventive of some new pastry or discovering something in the art of cookery 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 eould have divided the opportunity of listening to Jesus. But Mary monopolizes Christ while Martha swelters at the fire. 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 scalddd her hand, or something was burned black that-bought 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 Mar- r tha 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 pMTflexilies and anxieties.

First there is the trial of non-npprecia-tion. 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 # comiug. 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, n clothing establishment, a restaurant, n laundry, n 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 nre taxed to the utmost. Housekeeping Cares. You think, O man of the world, that you have all the cares and anxieties. If the can's and anxieties of the household should come upon you for one week, you would l>e tit for the liupuie asylum, 'fluhalf rested housekeeper arises in nie morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an Irrevocable hour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not come; whnt if the clock has stopiwd-no matter, she must have the morning repast nt nn irrevocable hour. Then the children must lx- got off to school. Whnt if their garments are torn; what if they do not know ‘their lessons', whnt if they have lost h hat or Msh -they must be ready. Then you have all the diet of the day and perhaps of several days, to plan, but whnt if the butcher has sent ment unmasticnble, or the grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, nnd whnt if some piece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or’ the roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of n thousand things occur—you must be ready. Spring weather comes, nnd there nrast be a revolution in the family wardrobe, or nutumn coiim's, and you must shut out the northern blast, but what if the moth has preceded you to the chestj what if, during the year, the chil

dren have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if the fashions have changed! Your house must be an apothecary’s shop; it must be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of ailments —something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn, something to poultice the inflammation, something to silence the jumping tooth, something to soothe the earache. You must be in half a dozen places at the same/ime, Or you must attempt to be. If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient rush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient! O woman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of others in regard to your household toils, let me assure you, from the kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all your work from garret to cellar, and that the God of Deborah, and Hannah, and Abigail, and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and Hannah More is the God of the housekeeper! Severe Economy, Again, there is the trial of severe economy. Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are subjected to it, some under more and some under less stress ofj circumstances.’ Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars and take very costly dinners nt the restaurants he will be severe in demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of women —attempting to make $5 do the work of $7. A young woman about the enter the married state said to her mother, “How long does the honeymoon last?” The mother answered, “The honeymoon lasts until you ask your husband for money.” How some ipen do dole ont money to their wives! “How much do you want?” “A dollar.” “You are always wanting *a dollar. Can’t you do with 50 cents?” If the husband has not the money, let him plainly say so. If he has it let him make cheerful response, remembering that his wife has as much right to it as he has. How the bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household. She is the president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk, and there is a panic every few weeks. This thirty years’ war against high prices, this perpetual study of economics, this lifelong attempt to keep the outgoes less than the income, exhausts innumerable housekeepers. Oh, my sister, thia is a part of the Divine discipline! If it were best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front windows, and the ravens would fly in with food, and after you had baked fifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of Zarephath, would be full, and the shoes of the children would last as long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness—forty years. Beside that this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none of the nuisances of catering for appetites, and in the land of the white robe they never have to mend anything, nnd the air in that hill country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man owns his own house, and a mansion at that. It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be sy great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of life if in this wbrld you had a country seat, but if you have walked with tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount celestial equipage! And, if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom, oh, the joy of an eternity in which yoir shall have nothing to do except what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for’eighteen centuries!

Sickness and. Trouble. •There are many housekeepers who could get along with their toil if it were not for sickness and trouble. The fact is. Onehalf of the women of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass who has never had an ache or a pain may consider household toil inconsiderable, and toward evening she may skip away miles to the Felds aud drive home the cattle, and she may until 10 o’clock at night fill the house with laughing racket. But, oh, to do the work of life with wornout constitution, when whooping cough has been raging for six weeks in the household, making the night as sleepless as the day! That is not so easy. Perhaps this comes after the nerves have been shattered by some bereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house and set the crib in the garret because the occupant has been hushed into a slumber which needs no mother's lullaby. Oh, she could provide for the whole group a great deal better than she edn for a part of the group, now the rest are gone! Though you may tell her God is taking care of those who nre gone, it is motherlike to brood both /locks, and one wing she puts over the flock in the house; the other wing she puts over the flock in the grave. There is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that will take a woman happily through the trial of home life. At first there may be a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household nre more than atoned by the joy of being together nnd by the fact that when it is late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is time to go. The mishaps of the household, instead of being a mutter of anxiety and reprehension, are a matter of merriment—the loaf of bread turned into n geological specimen, the slushy custards, the jaundiced or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the cutlery nnd the mantel ornaments of a new home. But after awhile the romance is'all gone, and then there is something to be prepared for the tnbic thnt the Isxik calles! “Cookery Taught in Twelve lessons” will not tench. The receipt for milking it is npt a handful of this, a cup of that and n spoonful of something else. It is not something sweetened with ordinary condiments or flavored with ordinary flavors or baked in ordinary ovens. It lathe Io if of domestic hap|dncM, ami nil the ingredients come down from heaven, and the fruits nre plncked from the tree of life, nnd it is sweetened with the now wise of the kingdom, nnd it is baked in (Ire oven of home trial. . Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had n wretched home. A innn 1-nniiot be hnppy wltti two wives, much less (UK), and he snys, writing out of his own experience, "B«<ter is a dinner of herbs where love ts than a stalled ox ami hatred therewith.*’ Home Influence. How great are the responsibilities of housekeepers! Sometimes an indigestible article of food by its effect upon a king hns overthrown an empire. A distinguished statistician says of unmarried men there are 38 criminals, and of 1.000 married men only 1H are criminals. What a suggestion of home influences! Lbt the

mnst be made of them. ' Housekeepers by the food they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they introduce, by the influences they bring around theii home, are deciding the physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race. You say yoqr life is one of sacrifice. 1 know it. But, my “'sters, that isthe only life worth living That was Florence Nightingale's life; that was Payson’s life; that was Christ’s life. We admire it in others, but how very hard it is for us to exercise it ourselves! A rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half starved lad who had offended against the laws of the school and said, “Take off your coat directly, sir!” The boy refused to take it off, whereupon the teacher said again, “Take off your coat, sir!” as he swung the whip through the air. The boy refused. It was pot because he was afraid of the lash—he was used to that at home—but it was from shame —he had no undergarment—and as at- the third command he pulled slowly off his coat there went a sob through the school. They saw thvn whj’ he did not want -to remove his coat, and they saw the shoulder blades had almost cut through the skin, and a stout, healthy boy rose up and went to the teacher and said: “Oh, sir, please don’t hurt this poor fellow! Whip me. See, he’s nothing but a poor chap. Don’t hurt him. He’s poor. Whip me.” “Well;” said the teacher, “it’s going to be a severe whipping. lam willing to take you as a substitute.” “Well,” said the boy, “I don’t care. You whip me, if you will let this poor fellow go.” The stout, healthy boy took the scourging without an outcry. “Bravo!” says every man. “Bravo!’! How many of us are willing tq take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and the anxiety for other people? Beautiful things to admire, but how little we have of that spirit! God give us that self-denying spirit, so that whether we are in humble spheres or in conspicuous spheres we may perform our whole duty, for this struggle will soon be over. The .Christian Housekeeper. One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we would come in from summer play and sit down at the table'at noon I remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the line of gray hair, and how sometimes she. would sit down at the table and put her head against her wrinkled hand nnd say, “Well, the fact is, I’m too tired to eat.” Long after she might have delegated this duty to others, she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the matter herself.’ In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago in an express train I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the window nnd tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so one of my old, schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “DeWitt, I see you are looking out at the scenes of your boyhood.” ‘jOh, yes,” I replied, “I was looking out alt the old place where my Wiother lived and died.” That night in the cars the whole scene came back to me. There was the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children on either side of the table, most of them gone rover to come back. At one end of the table, my father, with a smile that never left his countenance even when he lay in his coflin. It was an 84 years’ smile—not the smile of inanition, birt of 'Christian courage and of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful, benignant, hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She was very tired. I nm glad she has so good a place to' rest in. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” Copyright. 1897.