Counsels for the Church - Ellen G. White

wives debility and disease. They will not indulge in the gratification of base
passions, while ringing in the ears of their wives that they must be subject to
the husband in everything. When the husband has the nobility of character,
purity of heart, elevation of mind that every true Christian must possess, it
will be made manifest in the marriage relation. If he has the mind of Christ,
he will not be a destroyer of the body, but will be full of tender love, seeking
to reach the highest standard in Christ.
No man can truly love his wife when she will patiently submit to
become his slave and minister to his depraved passions. In her passive
submission she loses the value she once possessed in his eyes. He sees her
dragged down from everything elevating to a low level, and soon he suspects
that she will as tamely submit to be degraded by another as by himself. He
doubts her constancy and purity, tires of her, and seeks new objects to arouse
and intensify his hellish passions. The law of God is not regarded. These
men are worse than brutes; they are demons in human form. They are
unacquainted with the elevating, ennobling principles of true, sanctified love.
The wife also becomes jealous of the husband and suspects that if
opportunity should offer, he would just as readily pay his addresses to
another as to her. She sees that he is not controlled by conscience or the fear
of God; all these sanctified barriers are broken down by lustful passions; all
that is Godlike in the husband is made the servant of low, brutish lust.
When Unreasonable Demands Are Made
The matter now to be settled is: Shall the wife feel bound to yield
implicitly to the demands of her husband when she sees that nothing but base
passions control him, and when her reason and judgment are convinced that
she does it to the injury of her body, which God has enjoined upon her to
possess in sanctification and honor, to preserve as a living sacrifice to God?
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