For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in
still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same
varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in
temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister
be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and
Martha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be
no Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;
the bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his
hand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot
forth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron
beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come
whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but
there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River
Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does
not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an
addition of ribs.