Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.
The wise builder
The Scriptures have adapted their instructions to every character and condition in human life.
I. Describe the wise woman.
1. She must know how to manage with prudence and care the concerns of a family. It is woman’s work to “guide the house.” How many, on marrying, find they need to learn the first principles of domestic economy. If a man can be more happy in any other house than his own, he is a lost man.
2. A wise woman will improve her taste and her manners. This in no way involves her becoming proud.
3. A wise woman will aim to improve her mind. The mind is enlarged by receiving ideas, and by using them as materials of thought and reasoning.
4. A wise woman will endeavour to enlighten and improve her conscience. This is the faculty of the soul by which we weigh the morality of an action. To improve the conscience we must give it light, and let it guide us. Well enlightened, it guides to happiness and heaven.
5. A wise woman will be particularly careful to cultivate the heart. The instinctive affections are capable of improvement by other means than grace. But the female character is essentially defective in the absence of piety. Religion has a peculiar sweetness when it mingles with the modest softness of the female character. By reason of their peculiar trials, females need the comforts, hopes, and prospects of religion more, if possible, than the other sex.
II. A wise woman buildeth her house. To build her house is to promote the best good of her husband and her offspring.
1. How will such a woman affect their estate? Her wisdom will save more than her hands could earn.
2. She will render her family respectable.
3. She will render her family happy. She will so manage as not to irritate their passions. Her example will breathe through the house a mild and soft atmosphere. There is no resisting the combined influence of so many virtues. What she cannot do by her precepts and examples, she effects by her prayers. Her influence surely extends beyond her own family.
Reflections:
1. Females see how they are to rise in the scale of being.
2. See the importance of supporting good schools.
3. See the importance of the gospel.
4. Females should make the Scriptures their daily study.
From the mother, rather than the father, the members of the family will take their character. (D. C. Clark.)
Wise and foolish wives
The foolish woman does not know that she is plucking down her house; she thinks she is building it up. By unwise energy, by self-assertion, by thoughtless speeches, by words flung like firebrands, she is doing unutterable mischief, not only to herself, but to her husband and family. There are, on the other hand, wise women who are quietly and solidly building the house night and day: they make no demonstration; the last characteristic that could be supposed to attach to them would be that of ostentation; they measure the whole day, they number its hours, they apportion its worth; every effort they make is an effort which has been reasoned out before it was begun; every word is looked at before it is uttered; every company is estimated before it is entrusted with confidence. In this way the wise woman consolidates her house. (J. Parker, D.D.)
House wifery
I. Its great power.
1. It can build up. “Every wise woman buildeth her house.”
(1) Materially. By her economy, industry, and wise management she increases its material resources. A good wife builds up her house--
(2) Spiritually. A good wife by her example, her spirit, her admonitions, her reproofs, her prayers, rears in her house a very temple of industry, intelligence, and worship.
2. It can pull down. “The foolish plucketh it down with her hands.” There are women who by their miserable tempers and degrading habits ruin their husbands and children.
II. Its necessary qualification. What is the necessary qualification for a good housewife? “Wisdom.” (Homilist.)
Home made happy by a good wife
A plain marble stone, in a churchyard, bears this brief inscription: “She always made home happy.” This epitaph was penned by a bereaved husband, after sixty years of wedded life. He might have said of his departed wife, she was beautiful, and accomplished, and an ornament to society, and yet not have said she made home happy. Alas, he might have added, she was a Christian, and not have been able to say, “She always made home happy.” What a rare combination of virtues and graces this wife and mother must have possessed! How wisely she must have ordered her house! In what patience she must have possessed her soul! How self-denying she must have been! How tender and loving! How thoughtful for the comfort of all about her! (Christian Treasury.)