Old Paths In Portrait

“The business of providing for the family, however, belongs chiefly to the husband. It is yours, my brethren, to rise early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness, and to drink, if necessary, the waters of affliction that you may earn by the sweat of your brow a comfortable support for the domestic circle. This is probably what the apostle meant when he enjoined us to give honor to the wife as to the “weaker vessel” (1Pe 3:7): the honor of maintenance, which she in consequence of the weakness of her frame and the frequent infirmities that the maternal relation brings upon her is not so well able to procure for herself. In most barbarous countries and in some half-civilized ones, the burden of manual labor falls upon the female, while her tyrant lord lives in indolence, feeding upon the industry of the hapless being whom he calls a wife, but treats as a slave. And are there no such idle tyrants in our age and country, who so as they can live in indolence and gratify their appetites, care not how they oppress their wives?—wretches who do little or nothing for the support of the family? How utterly lost to every noble and generous sentiment must that man be whose heart cannot be moved by the entreaties or tears of an interesting woman—who can hear in vain her pleadings for his child at her breast and his child by her side, who by such appeals cannot be induced to give up his daily visits to the tavern or his habits of sauntering idleness to attend to his neglected business and stay the approaching tide of poverty and ruin. Such a creature is worse than a brute: he is a monster. It seems a pity that there is no law and no convict ship to bear him away to a land where if he will not work, so neither could he eat (2Th 3:10)…Let the husband, then, have the care of providing, the wife that of distributing to the necessities of the family; for this is the rule both of reason and revelation.”

-John Angell James  English Minister and Author  1785-1859