never have for her tradesman any man who frequented conventicles, who was not content with the religion of his betters, and who must needs scorn the parish church and do despite to the saints’ days.  Another gossip asked her what she expected to make of her great family of boys when it was well known that all the gentry in the neighbourhood but two or three had sworn that they would never have a hulking Puritan to brush their boots or run their errands.  And it almost made her husband burn his book and swear that he would never be seen at another prayer-meeting when his wife so often said to him that he should never have had children, that he should never have made her his wife, and that he was not like this when they were first man and wife.  And in her bitterness she would name this wife or that maid, and would say, You should have married her.  She would have gone to the meeting-house with you as often as you wished.  Her sons are far enough from good service to please you.  ‘My wife,’ he softly said, ’was afraid of losing the world.  And then, after that, my growing sons were soon given over, all I could do, to the foolish delights of youth, so that, what by one thing and what by another, they left me to wander in this manner alone.’  And I suppose there is scarcely a household among ourselves where there have not been serious and damaging misunderstandings between old-fashioned fathers and their young people about what the old people called the ‘foolish delights’ of their sons and daughters.  And in thinking this matter over, I have often been struck with how Job did when his sons and his daughters were bent upon feasting and dancing in their eldest brother’s house.  The old man did not lay an interdict upon the entertainment.  He did not take part in it, but neither did he absolutely forbid it.  If it must be it must be, said the wise patriarch.  And since I do not know whom they may meet there, or what they may be tempted to do, I will sanctify them all.  I will not go up into my bed till I have prayed for all my seven sons and three daughters, each one of them by their names; and till they come home safely I will rise every morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them all.  And do you think that those burnt-offerings and accompanying intercessions would go for nothing when the great wind came from the wilderness and smote the four corners of the banqueting-house?  If you cannot banish the love of foolish delights out the hearts of your sons and daughters, then do not quarrel with them over such things; a family quarrel in a Christian man’s house is surely far worse than a feast or a dance.  Only, if they must feast and dance and such like, be you all the more diligent in your exercises at home on their behalf till they are back again, where, after all, they like best to be, in their good, kind, liberal, and loving father’s house.

Have you a family?  Are you a married man?  Or, if not, do you hope one day to be?  Then attend betimes to what Charity says to Christian in the House Beautiful, and not less to what he says back again to her.