The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-03-25


stead where some of us were reared, though
the old house long ago was pulled down
and its occupants scattered never to meet
until in the higher home that awaits the
families of the righteous. While there are
more good and faithful wives and mothers
now than there ever were, society has got
a wrong twist on this subject, and there
are influences abroad that would make
women believe that their chief sphere is
outside instead of inside the home.
Hence in many households children, in.
stead Of blessing, are nuisance. 1t is a
card case versus child's primer, carriage
versus cradle, social popularity versus
domestic felicity. Hence infanticide and
and ante-natal murder are SO COM
mon that all the physicians, allo-
pathic, hydropathic, homeopathic and
eclectic, are crying out in horror, and it is
time that the pulpits joined with the med
ical profession in echoing and re echoing
the thunder of Mount Sinai, which says:
"Thou shalt not KILL" and the Book of
Revelation, which says, "All murderers
shall have their place in the lake which
burneth with fire and birthstone" And
the man or the woman who takes life a
minute old will as certainly go straight to
hell as the man or woman who destroys
life forty years old. And the wilde t.,
loudest shrek of Judgment day viii be
given at the overthrow of those who
moved in the high and respectable circles
Of earthly society, yet decreed by their
own act as far as they could privately
effect it, the determination of the advanc-
ing generations, abetted in the horrid
crime by a lot of Internal quacks with
which modern medicine is infested. When,
on the Last Day, the criers of the Court
shall, with resounding "Oyez," "Oyezw de-
clare the "Oyer and Terminer" of the uni
verse opened, and the Judge, with gavel
of thunderbolt, shall smite the nations
into silence, and the trial of all
the fratricides, and parricides, and
matricides, and patricides, and uxori-
cides, and regicides, and decides, and
infanticides of the earth shall proceed,
none of my hearers or readers can say that
they knew not what they were doing.
Mighty God! Arrest the evil that. is over.
shadowing this century.
I charge you, my sister, that you take
your husband along with you to Heaven.
OF course, this implies that you yourself
ara Christian. I must take that for
granted. 1t can not be possible that after
what Christianity has done for women,
and after taking the infinitely responsible
position you have assumed at the head of
the household, that you should be in po-
sition antagonistic to Christ. It was not
a slip of the tongue when spoke of you as
being at the head of the household. We
men rather pride ourselves as being at the
head of the household, but it is only a
pleasant delusion. To whom do the chill
dren go when they have trouble! When
there is sore finger to be bound up or one
of the first teeth that needs to be removed
to make way for one that is crowding it
out, to whom does the child go? For whom
do children cry out in the night when they
get frightened at a bad dream? Aye, to
whom does the husband go when he has
a business trouble too great or too deli
cate for outside ears. We, the men,
are heads of the household in name, but
you, o wives! are heads of the household
in fact, and it is your business to take your
husband with you into the Kingdom OF
God and see that house prepared for
Heaven.
You can do it OF course, Gods almighty
grace alone can convert HIM, but you are
to be the instrument. Some wives keep
their husbands out of Heaven, and others
garner them for it. If your religion, O.,
wife, is simply the joke of the household,
if you would rather go to the theater than
the prayer-meeting, if you can beat all the
neighborhood in progressive euchre, if
your husband never sees you kneel at the
bedside in prayer before retiring, if the
only thing that reminds the family of your
church relations is that on communion
day you get home late to dinner, you will
not be able to take your husband to Heaven
for the simple reason that you win not get
there yourself. But | suppose your re-
ligion is genuine, and the husband realizes
there is in your soul a divine principle, and
that though you may be naturally quicker
tempered than he is. and have many inn
PROJECTIONS that distress you more than
they can any one else, still you are des-
tined for the skies when the brief scenes of
this life are over. How will you take him
with you? There are two oars to that boat
prayer and holy example.
But you say he belongs to worldly club,
or he does not believe a word of the Bible,
or he is an inebriate and very loose in his
habits? What you tell me shows that you
don't understand that while you are at the
one end of a prayer, the omnipotent God
is at the other end, and it is simply a
question whether Almightiness is strong
enough to keep His word.
have no doubt there will be great con-
ventions in Heaven called for celebrative
purposes, and when in some Celestial as
semblage the saints shall be telling what
brought them to God, believe that ten
thousand times ten thousand viii say, shy
wife,
I put beside each other two testimonies
of men concerning their wives, and let you
see the contrast. An aged man was asked
the reason of his salvation. With fearful
emotion he said: my wife was brought
/ to God some years before mysef. perse-
cuted and abused her because of her re-
ligion. She, however, returned nothing
but kindness constantly, maintaining an
anxiety 20 promote my comfort and hap
piness, and it was her amiable conduct
when suffering ill-treatment from me that