Religion and Love Both

"We women are exacting creatures; and you can not please us unless we have the whole of you. Oh, if you knew the sacredness, the beauty, the sweetness of married life, as I do, you would as soon think of entering heaven without a wedding garment, as of venturing on its outskirts even, save by the force of a passionate, overwhelming power that is stronger than death itself!" ~ written to a young friend whom she feared was marrying for reasons other than love.

[Said of Mrs. P in More Love to Thee, the Life & Letters of Mrs. Prentiss: "She placed religion and love alike at the foundation of a true home; the one to connect it with heaven above, the other to make it a heaven upon earth." I think that's so nice to know. ~ mr]

Self-Forgetting Spirit

I am ashamed of myself, of late, that these subjects of love and matrimony find a place in my thoughts which I never have been in the habit of giving them, but people here talk of little else and I am borne on with the current. I think that to give happiness in married life a woman should possess oceans of self-sacrificing love and I, for one, haven't half of that self-forgetting spirit which I think essential. ~ excerpt from letter to Anna S. Prentiss, April 24, 1843


[ How many of us would attest to a lack in this area? A need for prayer, yes?]