Our Servants
OF how important a significance “servants” are in our social economy, you never learn better than when you hear “housewives” discuss among themselves domestic affairs.
The husband is momentarily dealt with, the children a little more at length, but the maids are given the lion’s share of attention. And when a maid has only just come, she is often spoken of with disproportional praise, but soon after in a way, which is in between complaint and indignation.
This is natural, and it would not be fair to our housemothers, if we were to hold this up against them as proof of their readiness to take offense.
The fact of the matter is: the conflict that goes on in every department of life between the more privileged and less favored among us, is introduced into your own home by your servants and forces you as housemother personally to come in contact with it.
The man, too, comes in contact with it, but always from a certain distance. In his factory, in his store, in his field, but not so directly in his own house, and therefore only now and then, and not from morning till night.
For our housemothers this is different.
They receive their maids in their own house. They are in close touch with them. They must endure it that their maids intrude themselves into everything. With every difference of idea, with every neglect, with every transgression, the housemothers are bound to straighten matters out and maintain order. And such not from a distance, not through any intermediary, but directly they themselves in person face to face.
This difficulty, already great where only one maid is kept, is much aggravated where they come in touch with the jealousies and minor disputes of the maids among themselves.
More painful still this difficulty becomes where the children of the household have reached adolescence, and presume upon all manner of authority over the servants.
And it becomes most painful of all, when the family purse is but poorly filled, and ever and again house-motherly economy must be defended in the face of the not wasteful, but yet careless hand of the servants.
The number of devout, faithful housemothers, who for years have faced this difficulty with their servants, and what sacrifices of rest, and of their own convenience, yea, sometimes of their own food, they have made, to keep up the honor of the house, and yet avert the sin of running into debt, is known alone to Him, Who has overheard the painful sighings of their heart.
THE relation therefore between housewives and servants should have been estimated at its truer worth, so as both in training and in preaching to have demanded more attention.
For do not forget, that these relations of service bring the two struggling ranks of society most intimately into contact with one another.
From lower ranks young daughters go into the houses of the higher rank. There they find an entirely different life from what they have known at home; oftentimes a wealth of which they had no idea before. They come among people who as a rule stand at a higher level of development. And now they are called to serve these people.
In this service, they come to know these same people, who before they saw only in the street, in their private life, sometimes at very close range; and they see how higher development in turn goes hand in hand with particular sins.
Moreover, frequently they have sharp eyes and practiced ears. They see much, and they hear much. A new world opens before them, and in their visits at home all sorts of inquiries are made concerning this new world. And they readily tell their tales, so that our servants form a sort of living connection between those who keep servants, and the households from which one “goes out serving.”
And then it is self-evident, that the constant intercourse between “housewives” and “servants” cannot be maintained, apart from mutual influence. Whether you want to or not, you always undergo certain influences from your servants, even if these are not so strong as those from you.
So it cannot be denied, that the good relationship between higher and lower classes of society can be advanced by nothing so effectively, as by an happy intercourse, an intercourse after God’s ordinance, between our housemothers and their servants. But also that few causes bring about so much bitter animosity between class and class, as the strained relation so many housewives sustain toward their servants.
Do not forget, that these servants presently marry, become wives of “working men” and mothers of young children, and that it makes all the difference, whether this “wife” and mother helps avert the coming storm, or whether she encourages the outbreak of this storm of violent passion.
Also in the workingman’s family the influence of woman is so great.
THE responsibility of every housewife, with respect to her “servants” can therefore not weigh heavily enough upon the conscience.
Here also is a moral obligation toward Him, Who grants one woman the right to be served, and imposes on the other the duty of serving. And of the way in which this duty has been discharged, account shall once be given.
What renders the understanding of the just relation of these “served” and “serving” women, so very difficult, is the lack of written law. It all goes by custom and habit and local usage. Hence the difficulty, of deciding in many a case, what is permitted and what is not permitted. For naturally they who serve, do not serve except upon an understanding, in which they want to feel themselves protected by certain valid statutes.
So long as this common law was fairly operative, everything went well. But in our days this common law is undergoing all sorts of modification. In America the relation between housewife and maid is already altogether modified. Even in Europe it is already far more favorable for house servants than in the East. And it is difficult to prophesy what these changing conditions will bring about before long.
Meanwhile our housemothers experience all the inconvenience of this uncertainty. And thereby pay the penalty for the sin of housemothers of a former generation, who in many ways took unfair advantage of the dependence and helplessness of their maids.
This leads to this constant “giving of warning to quit” from both sides.
This constant “changing” weakens the mutual relationship. The heart gets away from it. The real human is being lost from it. Nothing rests save machines for use.
And where the feeling of the heart does burst into flame, it is always with respect to the “portion” set apart for them.
A portion which the “housemaid” ever enlarges and the “housewife” ever desires to reduce.
So from both sides sin is committed. And the evil that so makes progress in our families, and from our families in society at large, becomes ever more menacing.
THE Proverb-poet says, that: “Whoso findeth a good wife, obtaineth favor of the Lord” (18, 22); and so it can be said of the housewife, that whoso hath found a faithful, good maidservant, should thank God for this token of His favor.
A faithful housemaid is worth her weight in gold, especially in a Christian home, and she who is able to train a young daughter to be a good housemaid, prepares a blessing for the family to which she comes.
And truly thanksgiving for the gift at the hand of God of a faithful servant, ascends from many a Christian home.
Our believing housemaids are even to be preferred so far above the daughters from neglected homes, that people of the world, who long have put their faith to a side, not infrequently are bent upon the maintenance of the faith in their kitchen.
There is still a blessing, which must not be perverted.
Yet this does not dismiss the question, whether as a rule our Christian housemothers and our Christian housemaids deal with one another in such a way, that the name of the Lord is praised, and whether a power of salvation goes out from good relationship between those who are more rich and those more poor.
In this respect our calling is so high. There can go out from our homes so much influence for good. But also, because of the Name of the Lord which we confess, by wrong relationships so great evil can be occasioned.
A tie, which people of the world know not of, binds us together. We are under human ordinances not merely as men, but also as one in Christ, our Savior, under the Divine ordinance of a love sealed in the blood of the holy Lamb of God.
Housemaids, who abuse this sacred tie, to withhold from housewives the Divinely appointed portion of faithfulness and honor, commit grievous sin. But the housemother also sins, who withholds from her housemaids the portion appointed by the selfsame God, of love and solicitous care, and of appreciation of their services.
Our fathers ordered things aright. They adopted their housemaids as members of the family. Our housemothers of the Reformation dealt with their housemaids on a footing of motherly intimacy. And still they had sufficient sense of duty, not to spoil them, or allow the ordinance of “serving” to lose its stress.
Even yet with our housemaids we come to one Table of the Lord. Even yet in most Christian families the praiseworthy custom prevails, that together we pray, and together read God’s Word, and together sing His praise.
And surely this is a “portion,” which is our housemaid’s due (Prov. 31, 15).
But this is not enough.
This making of prayer together rather courts a judgment, when it stands over against a separated life on a strained footing of quarrelsomeness. And this fellowship in holy things, can only be such a savor, that is well-pleasing unto God, when it is the expression of a friendly, pleasant relationship which strengthens and feeds what is good in the same.
Not to take our maidservants out of their place. “To serve” remains their calling. And provided they do this as “serving not people, but the Lord,” they will be blessed in the same.
But as it has pleased the Lord our God, to have us be His menservants and His maidservants, and yet with fatherly faithfulness to watch over us and to accept filial love from us, so should it be in our households.
Serving as maidservants, but at the same time benefited by “motherly” disposition, and responding to this portion of love with something of “filial faithfulness.”
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