The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1917-07-14
OF MARRIAGE
AS TOLD BY A
BAPTIST MINISTER
(By Rev. |. E. Gates
Continued from yesterday


Continued from yesterday
One of the most serious perils of
marriage is to be mismated and this
may happen to the best of people.
Not every good women is fitted to be
a preachers wife. In fact, some of
the best women l know are absolute
ly disqualified from making preach
er the kind of wife he needs and
must have to do his best work. In
the first place, it is a mistake, psy-
Geological mistake, for brilliant
man to think he must marry his
equal or his superior in order to be
happy and useful. The truth is, the
brilliant man who gives himself to
study and heavy mental work ought
to have a wife with good common
sense who knows how to take care of
him and make him do the right thing
at the right time-taking the general
oversight of home and business af
fairs. She must pay the bills, taking
care of his reputation as far as she
can, for he is as helpless as a baby.
generally knowing nothing except
preaching. She must know where
placed books are. When she wants
him to dress up, she must hide every
thing she doesn't want him to wear,
and force him to put on such things
as she places upon his chair. 1t takes
a great deal of care and patience and
Christian charity to put up with him.
and a woman who wants to do socie-
ty stunts and visit much or read a
good deal, has no business with him.
In the second place, minds that think
along the same lines all the time are
not congenial. There must be divers
lity of thinking and change in topics
of conversation. The common sense
wife ought to take the conceit out Of
her scholarly husband occasionally
by inviting him to churn or by max
ing him work in the garden, and if
necessary, tell him some things.
There are two extremes a preacher
ought to avoid, if possible, in marry
ing. He ought not to marry an ig-
noramus or SLOUGH, becoming a con-
slant embarrassment to him all his
life, if he has any pride. If he has
no pride as to his own personal ap-
pearance, or how things appear in
the home, then he ought to quit
preaching and run garbage wagon.
have seen few preachers ruined
by lazy, indolent, ignorant, indiffer-
ent and slouchy women. A man can
not rise much above his wife in the
estimation of the people. A man is
known in public largely by the kind
of wife he has. She can make him
or unmake him. The true wife is the
complement of her husband, and In
her he discovers his other self Then
again, the preacher ought not to mar
ry woman who has ambition to be
a public servant, and thereby neglect
both him and the home. have
never known two public servants in
one home where the home did not
suffer. A preacher has no business
with a wife who wants to dominate
the community as leader socially or
religiously She has her place GER
tainly, but if she tries to impress all
the other ladies hat she is about the
only one with the right good sense
and must be looked to and sought
after for council and advice, then the
preacher had better write to his
friends to place his name before the
deacons of another church, for his
days at his present place are num-
bered
or all the 'callings in life where the
influences of the wife counts for most,
it is the ministry. For any preacher to
succeed he must have three friends,
and these three are Indispensable
God his own conscience and a
wife who loves him and helps in his
work Behind every great man is a
great woman, and the success of ev
cry great man is largely due either to
his mother or to his wife A few
men can succeed in spite of an unsym