MAN—FINITENESS OF
MacNeile Dixon, in his Gifford Lectures, depicts a fly crawling across Raphael’s masterpiece in the Vatican. How much can it know about the picture? It knows something, of course. It knows there are smooth places and rough; that some pigments are brighter than others. But it has no overall view of the painting or the goal of the painter, not because there is something wrong with the mural, but because of the fly’s limited vision.
MARRIAGE
A girl said to a boy, “The man I marry must be brave as a lion, but not forward; handsome as Apollo, but not conceited; wise as Solomon, but meek as a lamb; a man who is kind to every woman, but loves only me.”
The boy said, “How lucky we met!”
Eve was so jealous of Adam that when he came home each night she used to count his ribs.
—Rolling in the Aisles
First man: “I proposed to a girl and would have married her if it hadn’t been for something she said.”
Second man: “What was that?”
First man: “No.”
—Murray Watts
Marriage is like a castle under siege; those within want to get out, those outside want to get in.
—Arabic proverb
First year of marriage: “Sugar dumpling, I’m really worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad sniffle and there’s no telling about these things with all the strep going around. I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general checkup and a good rest. I know the food’s lousy but I’ll be bringing your meal in from Rozzini’s. I already have it all arranged with the floor superintendent.”
Second year: “Listen darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I’ve called Doc Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl, just for Poppa.”
Third year: “Maybe you had better lie down, honey. Nothing like a little rest when you feel lousy. I’ll bring you some soup.”
Fourth year: “Now look, dear, be sensible. After you’ve fed the kids and got the dishes done and the floor finished, you better lie down.”
Fifth year: “Why don’t you take a couple of aspirin?”
Sixth year: “I wish you’d just gargle or something instead of sitting around barking like a seal all evening.”
Seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! Are you trying to give me pneumonia?”
A bridegroom of forty was chided because he had married a woman of twenty. He answered, “It’s not as bad as it seems. When she looks at me she feels ten years older, and when I look at her I feel ten years younger. So really, we’re both thirty.”
It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one a failure.
—Viscount Samuel Herbert
Ten Keys to a Successful Marriage
Talk with each other.
Tell each other “I love you.”
Touch each other.
Tantalize each other.
Tolerate each other.
Trust each other.
Treat each other.
Treasure each other.
Thank each other.
Track with each other.
—Kenneth Kilinski
A woman said to a marriage counselor, “I married looking for an ideal. But I got an ordeal and now I want a new deal.”
In the words of a philosopher, “Marriage is a high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.” He’s wrong.
A judge in a divorce case asked the husband, “Will you tell the court what passed between you and your wife during your big argument that caused you to seek this separation?”
“I will,” said the husband. “It was a rolling pin, six plates, and a frying pan!”
Love is blind—marriage is the eye-opener.
The most disillusioned women are those who married because they were tired of working.
A man who gives in when he is wrong is wise. A man who gives in when he is right is married.
Love is blind and marriage is an institution. Therefore, marriage is an institution for the blind.
Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
—Martin Luther
Sign on a cash register operated by a cashier in a supermarket: “Just married: Count your change twice.”
—Bits & Pieces
If a man has enough horse sense to treat his wife like a thoroughbred, she will never turn into an old nag.
A woman who had been married seventy years filed for divorce. The judge asked, “Why?” She said, “Enough is enough.”
A woman went up to a man and said, “You look like my fourth husband!” He asked, “How many husbands have you had?” She answered, “Three.”
Arnold Olson, in a lecture before a conference in Jerusalem, told of a time when he returned from his first trip to the Orient. His wife came to the Minneapolis airport to meet him. When she got there, she was surprised to find their pastor and some other elders from the congregation in front of the flight information board. The pastor offered an explanation, “We’ve come to see how you two greet one another when your husband returns from his journey.”
When Winston Churchill was prime minister of Great Britain, his marriage was considered one of the best examples in England of true loyalty and love. Often, when he gave a speech in the House of Commons, he would not begin until he had received a sign from her.
Later in his life, someone interviewed Mr. Churchill and asked, “If you could live again, what would you want to be?”
With a twinkle in his eye, Churchill replied, “Mrs. Churchill’s next husband.”
What a benediction on a marriage! And what a monumental compliment for one’s wife.
—Mark Littleton
In Burlington, Vermont, a tombstone has the epitaph indicating that beneath it lies the remains of a woman who was married to her husband for fifty years and hoped for a better life.
My young daughters had returned from a marriage ceremony and were playing “wedding.” When the oldest, who was the minister, said, “Do you take this man for richer or poorer?” the bride replied firmly, “For richer.”
—Reader’s Digest
She didn’t want to marry him for his money, but it was the only way she could get it.
The Earl of Shaftesbury once said, “If the pope had been married, he would soon discover that he was not infallible.”
After due deliberation,
And much consideration,
I have had an inclination,
To make you my relation.
So if you’ll meet me at the station,
With the preacher’s cooperation,
We will form a combination,
That will increase the population.
Yours, in desperation,
Temptation.
One day a brother and sister were fussing and eventually it began to emerge into a fight. Just then the mother came in and demanded that they stop.
The girl then explained, “Oh Mama, we’re not fighting. We’re just pretending we are married.”
When William Jennings Bryan went to call on the father of his prospective wife to seek the hand of his daughter in marriage, knowing the strong religious feeling of the father, he thought to strengthen his case by quoting the proverb of Solomon: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing” (Prov. 18:22).
To his surprise the father replied with a citation from the apostle Paul to the effect that he that marrieth doeth well, but that he that marrieth not doeth better. The young suitor was for a moment confused. Then with a happy inspiration he replied that Paul had no wife and Solomon had seven hundred, and Solomon, therefore, ought to be the better judge as to marriage.
—C. Reuben Anderson
Matrimony is the only state that allows a woman to work eighteen hours a day.
Some men marry poor women to settle down, and others marry rich ones to settle up.
Marriage is like a violin. After the beautiful music is over, the strings are still attached.
Don’t ever question your wife’s judgment. After all, she married you.
If you do housework at two hundred dollars a week, that’s domestic service. If you do it for nothing, that’s matrimony.
Courtship makes a man spoon, but it’s matrimony which makes him fork over.
Socrates once advised a young man, “By all means get married. If you get a good wife you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher!”
The young couple sat in the romantic moonlight, hands clasped, and looked into each other’s eyes. He asked cautiously, “If I proposed, would you say yes to me?”
She was even more cautious. “If you knew I’d say yes, would you propose?”
Two teenagers were talking. Doris inquired, “When is your sister thinking of getting married?” Frank exclaimed, “Constantly!”
The wife who gives back to her husband the woman he married stands a more than even chance of getting back the man she married.
—John D. Jess
Whenever a man opens a car door for his wife, you know either the car is new or the wife is new.
When Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, a reporter asked them, “To what do you attribute your fifty years of successful married life?” “The formula is the same one I’ve used in making cars,” said Ford. “Just stick to one model!”
A successful marriage required falling in love many times, always with the same person.
—Mignon McLaughlin
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterward.
—Benjamin Franklin
A city mayor and his wife met a man whom she used to date. The man was a construction engineer. The mayor said, “Just think. If you’d married him, you’d be the wife of a construction engineer.”
She replied, “No. You got it wrong. If I had married him, he would be the mayor.”
When you marry him, love him.
After you marry him, study him.
When he is sad, cheer him.
When he is noble, praise him.
If he is jealous, cure him.
If he is honest, honor him.
When he is angry, ignore him.
If he is secretive, trust him.
When he deserves it, kiss him.
If he is generous, appreciate him.
When he is talkative, listen to him.
Let him think how well you understand him
But never let him know you manage him!
When Albert Einstein and his wife were being interviewed on the occasion of their golden anniversary, they were asked the routine question, “To what do you attribute the success of your marriage?”
Einstein replied, “When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this. That in our life together I would make all the big decisions and she would make all the little decisions. And we have kept to it for fifty years. That, I think, is the reason for the success of our marriage.” Then he looked up and added, “The strange thing is that in fifty years there hasn’t yet been one big decision.”
My two neighbors were having coffee. “You know,” said one, “I was telling my husband that even after twenty years of marriage your husband is still a gentleman. I always see him get out of the car, walk around to your side and open the door for you.”
“Well,” said her friend, “what you don’t know is that every time he does it, he says he is going to have that blasted door handle fixed tomorrow if it’s the last thing he does.”
—Reader’s Digest
A young man was in love with two women and could not decide which of them to marry. Finally, he went to a marriage counselor. When asked to describe his two loves, he noted that one was a great poet and the other made great pancakes. “Oh,” said the counselor, “I see what the problem is. You can’t decide whether to marry for batter or verse.”
—Karan F. Minick
MARTYRDOM
One of the old martyrs said to his persecutors as they were leading him to his death, “You take a life from me that I cannot keep, and bestow a life upon me that I cannot lose.”
—D. L. Moody
Bishop Hugh Latimer was martyred in 1555. After being sentenced to death for his convictions, he wrote an open letter in which he declared, “Let us consider all the dear friends of God, how they have gone after the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ; whose footsteps let us also follow, even to the gallows if God’s will be so.” A short time later he and his friend Nicholas Ridley were tied to a stake. As the leaping flames began to touch their bodies, Latimer called out, “Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out!”
The cruel Roman emperor Diocletian was bitterly persecuting the church. Actors on the stage often included in their routine a parody on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and other items of the Christian faith. An entertainer named Genesius, who had been reared in a Christian home, was doing a pantomime on baptism one day when suddenly the arrow of conviction pierced his heart. To the amazement of the crowd and the consternation of the emperor who was seated in a box near the stage, Genesius cried out, “I want to receive the grace of Christ that I may be born again and be set free from the sins which have been my ruin!” Turning fearlessly toward Diocletian, he said, “Illustrious Emperor, and all of you who have laughed loudly at this parody, believe me, Christ is the true King!” The enraged emperor demanded a slow and tortuous death for the actor, and Genesius died a noble witness for Christ.
Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John, was burned at the stake in Smyrna in A.D. 155. He had been a Christian for eighty-six years. When the proconsul told him to deny his faith, Polycarp answered, “Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He has done me no harm. Why should I forsake Him now?”
The proconsul then threatened to cast him in with the wild beasts, but Polycarp answered, “Call them!” He was then warned that he might be burned at the stake. Even that failed to move him. He responded, “You threaten me with fire which burns only for a moment, but you are ignorant of the fire of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly.”
These are Polycarp’s final words: “O Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ! I bless Thee that Thou hast counted me worthy of this day, and of this hour, to receive my portion in the number of the martyrs, in the cup of Christ.”
When the cruel Bonner told John Ardly of the pain connected with burning at the stake, the condemned Christian replied, “If I had as many lives as I have hairs on my head, I would lose them all in the fire, before I would lose Christ!”
According to David Barrett, 41 million Christians have been martyred, with 26 million Christians martyred after 1900.
A workman tells of a young officer attached to the court of Galerius. He was deeply impressed by the courage of the martyrs at Nicomedeia. He went to the Christians and asked them the secret of their courage. He was instructed in the Christian faith. On the next occasion when Christians were examined, he stepped forward and asked Galerius to add his name to theirs. “Are you mad?” demanded Galerius. “Do you wish to throw away your life?” “I am not mad,” was the answer. “I was mad once but am now in my right mind.” And so he died.
—William Barclay
John Huss, the Bohemian reformer, was burned at the stake in 1415. Before his accusers lit the fire, they placed on his head a crown of paper with painted devils on it. He answered this mockery by saying, “My Lord, Jesus Christ, for my sake, wore a crown of thorns; why should I not then, for His sake, wear this light crown, be it ever so ignominious? Truly I will do it willingly.” After the wood was stacked up to Huss’s neck, the Duke of Bavaria asked him to renounce his preaching. Trusting completely in God’s Word, Huss replied, “In the truth of the Gospel which I preached, I die willingly and joyfully today.” Huss died while singing, “Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, have mercy on me.”
When Chrysosyom was brought before the Roman emperor, the emperor threatened him with banishment if he remained a Christian. Chrysostom replied, “Thou canst not banish me for this world is my Father’s house.” “But I will slay thee,” said the emperor. “Nay, thou canst not,” said the noble champion of the faith, “for my life is hid with Christ in God.” “I will take away thy treasures.” “Nay, but thou canst not for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.” “But I will drive thee away from man and thou shalt have no friend left.” “Nay, thou canst not for I have a friend in heaven from whom thou canst not separate me. I defy thee; for there is nothing that thou canst do to hurt me.”
Arthur Tylee, who was murdered by the Indians of Brazil, on his return to the field for the last time was warned by a cousin, “These Indians may kill you.”
He replied, “Suppose they do?”
“But,” she said, “you are going to give up your life?”
He replied, “I have nothing to do with how long I shall live. I am in the will of God. If He sees fit to let me live to complete the language and to present the Lord Jesus and His power to save, I shall be happy. If not, His will be done. A grace often speaks louder than a life.”