CHAPTER 12A WIFE AND HER CONSCIENCE
HERE is a word or two of advice to a girl who doesn't know what to do about marrying a man who doesn't belong to her church. My dear girl, that injunction, "If a man would have thee go with him a mile, go two miles," works in even such a case as yours. If you cannot have your way and your church without a fuss then try his with good will. There is only one bar to your following that instruction, and that is the possible bar of conscience. If you firmly believe in your heart that the Catholic Church is the only true church and that a Baptist cannot and will not be saved and that the Baptist church is entirely wrong and a work of the devil, and that its members are all bent straight for Hades, then it wouldn't do for you to go against your conscience and go with your fiancé into the Baptist church. Not as long as your conscience remains in that unenlightened state. But if you stop to think a moment, you will know that even conscience is subject to education. Abraham once proposed to slay his own son and burn him up because he thought his conscience told him to. Afterwards he probably knew better. And David sent a man out in the forefront of the battle so that he could get killed off and leave David free to annex his wife. And yet David's heart was "right in the sight of God." And after somebody gave him a lecture on the subject his conscience waked up to the fact that the thing he had done was not the right thing to do. And he repented. Likewise he paid the price of his wrong doing. From the tone of your letter I conclude that it is not a matter of conscience with you at all — that it is merely a matter of determination to stand up for yourself and your church and your beliefs. But you can be a still stronger individual by standing up for all selves and all churches. In other words, you can be just as good a Catholic when you are going to the Baptist church and just as good a Baptist when you are going to the Catholic church or to no church at all. This is the day of the individual and of recognition of the fact that every individual is just as near God as all the others and that each individual must be led by the God within himself, not coerced by the laws within the organization which he has created. In other words, Catholics should leave their members free to grow out of their church if the spirit within directs them to do it. Also it should leave its laws universal enough so that people could keep on growing forever without having to go outside the church to do it. What I say of the Catholic church is true of any and all others. And because churches haven't gumption enough to get rid of these narrow, constricting laws that would make persons conform to the world instead of being transformed by the renewing from within of their own minds, as Paul expressed it — because the churches stupidly cling to their old laws, the people have to outgrow the churches instead of staying in the churches and letting the churches grow with them and for them. Witness the row that is made at the Methodist conferences over that obsolete church discipline which requires that church members shall never dance nor go to theaters nor wear feathers in their hats nor gold breastpins. Those rules were all right in the Puritan days when these things were such luxuries that hardly anybody could compass them, and when one or two sported gold breastpins and feathers in their hats everybody else was eaten up with envy and jealousy. But nowadays we can see gold breastpins and feathers without being eaten up with jealousy, and we have learned that God preaches through the theater and the dance as well as through the pulpit. It is absurd for the churches to hang on to their obsolete laws and try to run twentieth century people into sixteenth century molds. When a girl marries it is she who must leave her friends and her home and cleave to him. This has to be, on account of the business relations of a man. Under ordinary conditions the wife should go with the husband and help him to meet the conditions of his own social and business life. The only exception to this is in case the wife is wealthy and the man himself finds a new vocation in taking up the business responsibilities of his wife's money. If you are New Thoughty enough, and if you love this young man enough, you can meet his necessities and live happy ever after. But don't on your life go into it with the notion in your mind that you are making great sacrifices for him, and that he must tote you around on a chip the rest of your life in gratitude for these sacrifices. Think the thing all over carefully and weigh everything in the balance. Do you LOVE this man enough to leave your own family and cleave to him? Can you throw everything overboard and still be glad of your choice? Can you do this even when you begin to find out that he has feet of clay like any other ordinary individual? Will your conscience agree with your love? Are you sure in your heart that you can be just as near God as a member of the Baptist church as you can as a member of the Catholic church? Do you believe that you could bring up your children in reverence of God no matter what church you belonged to, or whether you belonged to no church at all? Will you burn your bridges behind you when you make the move and then forget it and put all your heart and love and good will into your new life? Then go ahead and God within you will bless you and yours. But count the cost first. Your folks won't understand you and they will probably feel quite grieved for a long time to come. But if you make a success of your marriage and if you are a happy and useful wife, and if you bring up good and healthy children your relatives are bound to condone the offense in the end. For New Thought is in the air, and there isn't anybody living who can keep right on existing in the old benighted separation-ideas of the past. There will of course be some who will despise you for making the change in church. They will consider that you merely sold yourself for money. These things will be unpleasant. Can you fully forgive and forget all these slights that will come? In other words, are you big enough to live and love and worship in the spirit without letting the letter kill your good will, and your love, and your enjoyment of your husband, your children, and your God? It is a serious undertaking and it all depends upon you. Not a bit of it depends upon your husband ! It takes two to make quarrelings and divisions and either one can stop it. Either one can make harmony in the home — provided neither one is altogether a knave or a fool.
And of course you are the only one that you can depend upon to do this. You cannot make your husband over — don't for a moment think you can even mitigate his ideas. If you are wise you certainly can and will in the end. But maybe you will not be wise enough! So you must not count on changing him a hair's breadth. All you can possibly count upon is the adjusting of yourself to conditions and making the best of those for better or — best.
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