This is the second installment in a series of sermons on marriage called “The Wedding Ring.” The series was written by T. DeWitt Talmage and was originally published by The Christian Herald in 1896. Some of the references are antiquated but the principles contained are timeless and invaluable. To start at the beginning of the series, click here.
 
|
We are continuing with the first sermon which is actually directed toward men and is called, “The Choice of a Wife.” It contains important nuggets about what makes a good wife. Prayerfully consider his points asking for God’s refinement in areas you need help with. I know that is hard – believe me I know. I cling to my sin for dear life at times. But the freedom and rich marriage that are the fruit of refinement is priceless.
MODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS
The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely, motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not only man’s equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea, during the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened for female education, the women of the country are better educated than the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality at the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have difficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of good womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour I entered this life until now, I hope the delusion will last until I embark from this planet. So you will understand, if I say in this course of sermons something that seems severe, I am neither cynical nor disgruntled.
NO NEED TO MARRY A FOOL.
There are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every home of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women, self-sacrificing women, holy women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the feet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the person of His suffering disciples; a thousand capped and spectacled grandmothers Lois, bending over Bibles whose precepts they have followed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women that are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man who, amid all this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some of you are abroad suffering from such disaster, and to halt others of you from going over the same precipice, I cry out in the words of my text: “Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?”
The same admonishment applies equally to women – which he gets to. One of the things I love about this man’s sermons is he does not soft peddle anything. He speaks boldly and truthfully. Written before the need to be so politically correct, he doesn’t hesitate to tell it like it is. A woman who leads a man astray, as Delilah did to Sampson, is a fool. Period.
