Marriage
...We were of one heart and mind in the Truth,
and each was prepared for the share of self sacrifice that the truth requires.
This is the secret of our unity and stability.
Our strength was rooted in God,
and in the loving and daily study of His Word.
Sister Jane Roberts
Christadelphian
May 1899
~
A wise man is a beauty anywhere,
but especially by the side of a good wife.
Brother Robert Roberts
~
The truth comes into our houses and tells us how we ought to behave there.
It has to do not only with the nature of man and the purpose of God,
but with the way husbands and wives carry themselves towards each other...
A husband of the apostolic type is governed by intelligence in his ways.
A wise man is a beauty anywhere, but especially by the side of a good wife.
How is he to behave to her? There is something on this point.
He is to “give honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life.”
There is a good deal implied in this. The wife is told to be subject to her husband:
but the husband is not told to lecture her on her duty to be subject. He is told to “give honor” to her.
This is the opposite of telling her she is subject. To tell her of her subjection is to cast dishonor upon her.
To treat her as a subject is to make her a slave and not a coheir of life eternal.
Let a man do his part and a woman is very likely to do hers.
Where is the woman that would not find it easy to be subject to a man who honored her,
“who nourished and cherished her, even as the Lord the church?”-( Eph 5:29 ).
There may be women who even in such a case would be insubordinate and untractable:
but they would be out of the common run,
If a man however, loves, nourishes and cherishes his wife,
he will not be under much temptation to lay down the law
to her on the subject of her subjection.
In fact he could not do such a thing,
for such a course would be inconsistent with the honor he gives her.
If each side would preach and concern themselves with their own duty,
each would find their own part easier.
It is not for a husband to say to a wife “It is your duty to obey me.”
It is not for a wife to say to a husband “It is your duty to honor me.”
This mode of going to work would frustrate instead of forward the end in view.
A wife is not likely to be the more obedient for being told it is her duty, but the reverse;
and a husband's love is not likely to grow for being ordered. Rather let the wife say,
“It is my duty to obey you;” and let the husband say, “It is my duty to honor you.”
Such an attitude, taken sincerely and naturally on each side,
and carried out in a practical way,
would be a powerful mutual help. The other way is a mutual hindrance and destruction.
The right way is the attitude divinely enjoined,
and it is the attitude taken by the children of God...
Brother Robert Roberts
~
A man knowing the gospel and able to talk of it but acting the part of a tyrant at home,
is no brother of Christ however he may pass current among men.
He is what Paul calls “a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.”
So [also] a woman having understanding of the ways of God,
but acting an insubordinate unloving part in private,
is no member of the sisterhood of Christ,
however distinctly and decidedly she may be recognized
as “a sister” among professors of the truth.
These things concern the spirit of Christ,
and “if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Brother Robert Roberts
~
Reason
would help the obligation
if loving husbands remembered always that their wives were not,
as a rule, so robustly constituted as themselves;
and that love is the wife's special right from the subject position she occupies by the law of God.
A sense of duty to God in the matter is the best help
and only safeguard in the matrimonial relation.
Brother Robert Roberts
May 1890
~
...We were of one heart and mind in the Truth,
and each was prepared for the share of self sacrifice that the truth requires.
This is the secret of our unity and stability.
Our strength was rooted in God,
and in the loving and daily study of His Word.
Sister Jane Roberts
Christadelphian
May 1899
~
The 8th of April! Ah,
what stirring memories does that date recall.
Looking back now upon the forty years that have elapsed
since April 8, 1859, when Brother Roberts and I were united in marriage,
a very busy scene presents itself to my mind,
and I thank God for having given the companionship of such a man for a lifetime.
Brother Roberts' noble qualities of mind were always readily at the service of the truth...
The voluminous writings he leaves behind, testify to his industry and ability.
I realize the truth of what Brother Roberts so often emphasized that
"life will soon be over."
He has done a good day's work, and was busy up to the last moment.
We were of one heart and mind in the Truth,
and each was prepared for the share of self sacrifice that the truth requires.
This is the secret of our unity and stability.
Our strength was rooted in God,
and in the loving and daily study of His Word.
Sister Jane Roberts
~
Man is for strength, judgment and achievement;
Woman is for grace, sympathy and ministration.
Between them they form a beautiful unit:
"Heirs together in the grace of life."
Brother Robert Roberts
~
Two things helped us to decide on the departure. (from Huddersfield, the first time.)
We had lost a little daughter, who came to us at the cot in Hebble Row some 12 months after our assumption of matrimonial bonds. By the way, we have found the said bonds such as we would not throw off. We have met a few, in our time, whose experience has resembled our own in this respect; but where we have met one case of this sort, we have met a hundred of the other sort - whose marriage wreaths were all faded and withered within a few months, and whose golden links have turned to iron fetters. There must be some reason for the difference. There is. All depends on the character of the wedded people. If the fear of God and regard for duty and the hope of futurity in Christ prevails on both sides, there will be lasting sweetness, because neither side leans too much on the other, and neither looks to the present for the realization of life's meaning; yet both do their duty as partners in the pact, even if natural motive fail. But if there is nothing but natural ignorance of God on each side, and natural seeking of pleasure and ministration, there will come, with the inevitable failings of nature, little breaks under stress - acts of inconsiderateness, expressions of haste that will act as escapes of steam, which scald and destroy. Scald wounds heal with time, but not with repetitions going on; and this is the danger, that once this sort of thing sets in, it is liable to become chronic, and marriage degenerates to a mere lodging house of convenience, and sour at that, instead of being what it is designed to be, a partnership of sweet and helpful adjustment: a noble communion of life - a fountain of love and light in the arid desolation that belongs to the things of evil that must prevail during the hiding of God's face from the children of men...
Brother Robert Roberts
My Days and My Ways
~
Bringing about a happier state of things in marriage
There are cases in which husband and wife,
both professedly in the truth, do not run smoothly together...
...as a life of continual jarring, whatever the cause, must be detrimental to progress of the truth,
it would be well for the sister who finds herself thus placed, to try to discover if she possibly can,
how she may by any modification of her own behavior, bring about a happier and more becoming state of things.
It would be better for her to forego even what she might legitimately claim as her right,
if the truth would be thereby served, than stand out for it at the cost of a perpetual unpleasantness,
which interferes with the work of the Spirit.
She will always have the consolation that whatever she loses by the service of the truth now,
(if incurred willingly) will be repaid her an hundredfold when the Lord returns.
Sister Jane Roberts
1872