Abigail, to save her husband and his property, hastens to the foot of
the hill. She is armed, not with sword or spear, but with her own
beauty and self-sacrifice, and when David sees her kneeling at the
base of the craig, he cries: "Halt! Halt!" and the caverns echo it:
"Halt! Halt!" Abigail is the conqueress! One woman in the right
mightier than four hundred men in the wrong! A hurricane stopped at
the sight of a water-lily! A dewdrop dashed back Niagara! By her
prowess and tact she has saved her husband, and saved her home, and
put before all ages an illustrious specimen of what a wife can do if
she be godly, and prudent, and self-sacrificing, and vigilant, and
devoted to the interests of her husband, and attractive.
As, Sabbath before last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands
how they ought to treat their wives--and, though I noticed that some
of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well--I now
take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their
husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that
while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you
did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than
overbalanced them. I suppose that if I could look into the heart of a
hundred wives here present and ask them where is the kindest and best
man they know of, and they dared speak out, ninety-nine out of a
hundred of them would say: "At the other end of this pew."