Roland H. Bainton - "Splendid Venture" (May 8, 1955)

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	(regal, hymnal pipe organ music)	0:03
	♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪	0:29
	♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪	0:37
	♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly host ♪	0:45
	♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪	0:53
	♪ Amen ♪	1:05
-	Oh God, most merciful and gracious,	1:13
	of whose bounty we have all received,	1:17
	accept this offering of thy people,	1:20
	remember in thy love those who brought it	1:22
	and those for whom it is given,	1:25
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.	1:28
-	The them of morning's splendid venture has reference,	2:04
	to marriage, parenthood and the forming of a home.	2:09
	This is to be sure it's something of an enlargement,	2:15
	of the theme of Mother's Day, but after all,	2:17
	no mothers without fathers and no mothers without children,	2:21
	all of this is in the context of the home.	2:26
	It is a splendid venture.	2:30
	It's splendid and it's also a venture.	2:33
	The married service says for better, for worse,	2:39
	for richer, for poorer,	2:45
	in sickness and in health.	2:48
	And one cannot foresee in advance,	2:53
	which it will be.	2:58
	In a majority of cases,	3:03
	the balance will probably be on the side of the better,	3:04
	and the richer or the adequate, and health.	3:10
	But not always.	3:15
	And anyone who has taught school	3:18
	as I have done for 36 years	3:20
	and has seen the alumni coming back	3:23
	after five years, 10 years, 15 years and so on,	3:25
	knows that there are some out of every class	3:30
	who will return after weathering stiff gales.	3:35
	There are accidents which may separate husband and wife,	3:44
	by land, and water and by air.	3:48
	Even crossing the street is precarious.	3:53
	And the kitchen ladder and the cellar stairs	3:56
	may break hips and sever arteries.	3:58
	We live dangerously.	4:01
	And there are swift,	4:05
	and frightful diseases not yet conquered.	4:08
	And by the end of a week, a husband or a wife who was hale,	4:15
	maybe no more on this side of the great divide.	4:20
	And as for children,	4:28
	they obviously are more subject to diseases	4:31
	than those who have acquired maturity and immunities.	4:34
	And they're more subject to accidents,	4:40
	I was calling recently in New York	4:42
	on a graduate student couple,	4:44
	and their child actually had gone out	4:48
	of a closed window on a third story	4:52
	and landed on an iron fence,	4:56
	with a prong through the leg.	5:01
	The grandfather took the child off, hailed a car,	5:07
	and luckily there happened to be a doctor in it,	5:11
	and he staunched the wound, and the boy's gonna make it.	5:13
	But one is not always so fortunate.	5:17
	These are the things that can happen.	5:24
	The purpose in mentioning them is not	5:27
	to deter anybody from making this splendid venture.	5:28
	After all the way in which young people take	5:34
	this kind of thing is superb.	5:36
	I've seen several instances in which one party	5:40
	was carried off or crippled by polio.	5:43
	One young woman left with two little boys.	5:47
	After a period of adjustment she has equipped herself,	5:51
	nd is carrying on in a profession very similar	5:55
	to that of her husband.	5:57
	Another young woman crippled, a mother,	6:00
	manages to propel herself	6:04
	around the house with a wheelchair.	6:06
	She's able to drive a car.	6:07
	And she is able to control three bursting boys	6:10
	without making them feel sorry for her.	6:15
	There's another family	6:21
	in which the first child was a Mongolian idiot.	6:24
	And as soon as feasible,	6:29
	they went right ahead and had another child.	6:30
	The second one is perfectly normal,	6:34
	and is a great help in dealing with the older defective.	6:37
	All of this kind of thing can happen.	6:46
	One marvels in fact, that things go right	6:48
	as often as they do,	6:50
	particularly with regard to the birth of babies.	6:52
	It's amazing that usually they're normal.	6:56
	But not always.	6:59
	The Catholic marriage service has	7:03
	a good deal to say about sacrifice.	7:06
	I've never heard that note struck	7:10
	in a Protestant wedding ceremony,	7:12
	but it might well be there.	7:17
	because there is sacrifice.	7:20
	And there is sacrifice even	7:24
	if everything goes along normally	7:26
	without any of these drastic emergencies.	7:29
	Founding a home, rearing children,	7:35
	all of this involves renunciations, joyous renunciations,	7:39
	but renunciations just the same.	7:45
	They are perhaps greater for the woman than for the man.	7:49
	Her situation has changed in the course of a century,	7:57
	in some respects for the better,	8:03
	in some respects, for the more difficult.	8:05
	She has a better time of it than her great grandmother	8:11
	with regard to the size of families,	8:16
	and the mortality of children and of mothers.	8:19
	In the old days, a mother with a baby at the breast	8:24
	was asked whether this was her first,	8:28
	and she said, "Yes, the first on the second dozen."	8:30
	Families often were that large.	8:36
	Add a great many of the children died in infancy.	8:40
	I was reading recently	8:46
	a tribute to his wife, by Thomas Platt,	8:50
	who was a president of Yale College in the 1830s.	8:54
	He married his wife on the day before her 15th birthday.	9:00
	She died at the age of 24 after burying six children	9:06
	of whom only two survived.	9:13
	"She often said to me," he says,	9:18
	"that bearing, and tending,	9:21
	and burying children is hard work,	9:24
	and I've had my full share.	9:28
	But it's what God made me for, and I rejoice	9:32
	to be able to bring more souls into his kingdom."	9:37
	Today we do feel that it's so important	9:45
	to bring more so soul into the kingdom.	9:47
	We're rather concerned as to what will become	9:53
	of them after they're here.	9:56
	The size of families has been reduced,	10:00
	and modern medicine has brought it to pass	10:04
	that the great majority of them reach maturity.	10:08
	The trials of our great-grandmothers	10:14
	are not in this respect, repeated in our generation.	10:17
	But in other respects,	10:22
	the lot of the wife may be more difficult,	10:24
	because frequently she has wider interests,	10:28
	she is better trained.	10:32
	Often, she is quite as professionally equipped	10:35
	as her husband.	10:40
	She may have been engaged in a profession before marriage,	10:42
	and this she gives up.	10:48
	And then she finds herself involved	10:52
	in a routine, largely manual,	10:55
	by day and by night,	11:00
	babysitting, doctoring, nursing,	11:05
	scouring, scrubbing, washing,	11:09
	even with all of the devices, disinfecting.	11:14
	She finds her life reduced to a primordial routine.	11:20
	And she is tempted to describe herself simply as a mammal.	11:26
	She craves intellectual stimulus,	11:32
	companionship on the level of other	11:36
	than merely physical and manual tasks.	11:41
	Then too, she gives up her economic independence.	11:47
	She ought to.	11:52
	While she is bearing and rearing a family,	11:54
	she should not have the responsibility of earning a living.	11:58
	She should be released from that,	12:04
	but the release means the relinquishment	12:07
	of her economic independence.	12:11
	The money no longer comes in in her name.	12:14
	She has nothing that she can call her own.	12:17
	And there are some who feel rather irked	12:22
	by that shift from a position of independence	12:27
	and competence, to one of dependence.	12:33
	And for the mother, this may be harder than for the father.	12:40
	On the other hand, let it not be thought	12:46
	that he makes no renunciations.	12:48
	I'm a man and I may exaggerate them.	12:52
	But I'd like to say a word.	12:56
	He earns the money.	13:00
	The salary comes in in his name, but it's not his!	13:02
	(congregation chuckles)	13:07
	He can't spend a cent without consent!	13:11
	He'd better not.	13:16
	A younger member of the faculty came to me a few weeks ago,	13:21
	and he offered me $50 for a bicycle.	13:23
	And after a day or two, he came back and he said,	13:27
	"We've had a family consultation. Offer withdrawn."	13:29
	He can't even engage in charity.	13:37
	He can't even give anything away without a consultation.	13:40
	There's nothing new about that.	13:43
	Martin Luther wrote to a friend and said,	13:45
	"I'm sending you a vase as a wedding present,	13:47
	p.s. Katie's hid it."	13:50
	The man is not independent, and he ought not to be.	13:56
	And what's more, he may have to take on extra jobs	14:01
	that he doesn't too much relish	14:05
	in order to eek out the income.	14:08
	Certainly that happens in the teaching profession.	14:12
	Most young teachers would be glad to have the summer open	14:16
	in order to engage in reading preparation	14:19
	of courses, research, and publication.	14:21
	But very commonly, they have to take on summer school work	14:25
	in order to supplement the income.	14:28
	A young man in the sciences	14:33
	frequently take on jobs in industry.	14:35
	I had one friend who was in biochemistry.	14:37
	And he took on testing of milk in dairies.	14:41
	Good work, he was glad to do it,	14:47
	but then he would have preferred to have been able	14:50
	to devote his time to a research problem	14:52
	on something not yet solved.	14:56
	the husband has to make accommodations	15:01
	with regard to his mode of living,	15:03
	with regard to his recreations, for example.	15:07
	Occasionally he may go off with masculine friends	15:12
	for some sort of an athletic jaunt,	15:17
	but normally he will plan to take his wife	15:20
	and his children on whatever there may be of a vacation.	15:23
	And he'll have to reduce his speed.	15:30
	He's got children and he will soon find out	15:34
	that there are two modes of travel,	15:36
	first-class, and with children.	15:38
	(congregation chuckles)	15:41
	He can't travel at the same speed.	15:46
	He can't travel for the same length	15:47
	of time during the day in an automobile.	15:50
	He can't end up at any hour of the morning.	15:53
	You simply have to adjust to the schedule of children.	15:56
	And whereas, he used to perhaps go to bed	16:05
	after enjoying the idyllic moonlight,	16:10
	now, he'll have to get there in time to get up	16:13
	with the chickens and the children.	16:17
	There are adjustments then,	16:21
	which have to be made on both sides.	16:23
	Not only are there adjustments,	16:28
	but almost certainly there will be clashes.	16:30
	And that is painful to both parties involved,	16:36
	because they love each other.	16:40
	And when they clash, they feel guilty about it,	16:43
	but they're almost bound to have some clashes.	16:47
	And they may be even more acute	16:53
	if the partners are persons	16:56
	of intelligence, character, determination, and will.	16:59
	By marriage, they become one flesh,	17:07
	but they don't become one mind.	17:09
	Some of the clashes arrive out of a difference in tempo,	17:14
	and timing, in the case of the husband and of the wife.	17:20
	The man goes out on his profession during the day,	17:28
	he has adult contacts.	17:32
	He talks with people on his own level.	17:35
	He may be talking most of the day as a matter of fact.	17:37
	And he comes back rather weary	17:40
	of talking, he wants to be quiet.	17:42
	And his wife has been engaged	17:46
	in a manual routine by herself part of the time,	17:48
	part of the time with only the company of little children.	17:52
	And when evening comes she would like to talk	17:56
	about something, she'd liked to talk in the first place.	18:00
	(congregation laughs)	18:03
	And talk about something on a rather different level	18:04
	from that in which he has been engaged.	18:08
	There's really nothing new about this.	18:11
	Martin Luther had the experience,	18:14
	during the day he sometimes preached three times, lectured,	18:16
	worked on books and had conferences with students.	18:21
	And when night came, he wanted to just drop in a chair.	18:23
	And his wife had slaughtered an ox,	18:28
	and brewed beer, and washed and spanked children,	18:30
	and superintended servants.	18:33
	And when Luther settled down, she would begin,	18:36
	"Herr Doctor," she always called him doctor.	18:39
	"Herr Doctor, was the prime minister of Prussia	18:43
	the cousin of the Duke of Brandenburg?"	18:47
	"Ah," said Luther, "I have to have patience	18:52
	with the Pope, and heretics, and my family, and Katherine."	18:54
	(congregation laughs)	18:57
	Which isn't saying how much patience she had	19:00
	to have with him.	19:02
	He says, "I don't see how Adam and Eve	19:04
	made it for 900 years."	19:05
	(congregation laughs)	19:07
	How often she must have said to him, "You ate the apple."	19:12
	And he would retort, "Well, you gave it to me."	19:16
	(congregation laughs)	19:19
	There's a very delightful little comedy	19:22
	which exemplifies some of these clashes	19:23
	in interest in modern life.	19:27
	It's the movie entitled, "Genevieve."	19:29
	I hope you've seen it, or that you may.	19:32
	Genevieve is the name of an antiquated automobile,	19:34
	vintage of about 1905.	19:37
	And the story is that in England, once a year,	19:40
	there was an old car excursion,	19:47
	from a radius of about 15 miles, roundabout,	19:50
	into the summer resort of Brighton.	19:53
	We have a young married couple, and the young man	19:59
	is extremely devoted to Genevieve,	20:01
	and he just loves this annual excursion.	20:04
	And his wife always goes with him to please him,	20:06
	but she hates all of the emergencies that inevitably arise.	20:09
	Well, an invitation comes to go to a party on the night	20:15
	that they've set to go with Genevieve.	20:18
	And she looks at it ruefully and crumbles it up,	20:21
	and throws it in the wastebasket.	20:23
	And he finds it there.	20:25
	And he knows how much she'd rather go to the party.	20:28
	So he calls up the hotel in Brighton,	20:32
	and cancels the reservation.	20:34
	But then she insists that she will go with him!	20:37
	And they go and they get the Brighton,	20:40
	and they don't have the reservation.	20:41
	And so they go on from predicament to predicament,	20:44
	alternately berating and embracing each other.	20:47
	Well now, the tempo was a little faster than in real life,	20:53
	but in real life there is this oscillation	20:57
	of friction and reconciliation.	21:01
	And if it's about comparatively trivial matters,	21:06
	it may not be so disturbing,	21:09
	but sometimes it's over questions of real moment.	21:12
	Sometimes, it's genuinely tragic.	21:18
	Take that story of Rebecca and Isaac	21:23
	that it began in such idyllic fashion.	21:26
	Twin boys were born to this couple, Jacob and Esau,	21:31
	and the affections of the father	21:35
	were fastened on Esau, the hunter,	21:37
	and of the mother on Jacob, the home boy.	21:41
	When Isaac was an old man and blind,	21:47
	Rebecca connived with Jacob	21:52
	to deceive the old man about the birthright.	21:56
	Well, that's a clash on a low level,	22:02
	but sometimes clashes occurred on a high level.	22:06
	Here's the case of a couple, and each of them is an MD.	22:11
	They have a child, the child is sick.	22:16
	The father says that he can take care	22:21
	of the case better than any other doctor.	22:23
	The mother says that a doctor ought not to treat	22:28
	a member of his own family.	22:31
	In this case, the wife wins,	22:37
	because she convinces her husband that she's right!	22:40
	Now, that's the best basis on which clashes	22:49
	of this kind can be resolved.	22:51
	In little matters one can just give away out	22:54
	of deference, and for the sake of harmony.	22:57
	But if there's a fundamental difference of opinion,	23:00
	the best solution is to thrash it out,	23:02
	and to come to an agreement.	23:05
	It can't always be done, to be sure,	23:08
	and then one has to learn to live with a disagreement.	23:12
	But every effort should be made	23:16
	to talk it through and to arrive at a calm mind.	23:20
	Now these clashes may spoil marriage.	23:27
	And what began as an idyllic romance may end up	23:32
	as a tired friendship, or perhaps a bickering partnership.	23:36
	And one sometimes feels	23:45
	that it's providential,	23:50
	if death carries off one partner,	23:53
	in the romantic period and prevents living on	23:59
	into a haggling old age.	24:04
	But it doesn't need to come out this way.	24:09
	And one way to prevent it is to resolve to prevent it.	24:14
	Elton Trueblood rightly says	24:21
	that marriage is not a contract,	24:23
	take it or leave it, try it out.	24:25
	If we don't like it, dissolve it. It is a commitment!	24:27
	And if there is a commitment, a resolve,	24:33
	to resolve the clashes.	24:40
	In most instances, it can be done.	24:45
	There are certain rules that may be of help.	24:53
	And one is,	24:57
	not to try to work out a clash when tired.	25:00
	If a difference of opinion occurs at bedtime,	25:08
	it's wise by mutual agreement,	25:12
	to defer the discussion until	25:15
	the freshness of the morning.	25:18
	And if people have come to know each other,	25:24
	they're ready to take it.	25:27
	If one says to the other,	25:29
	"I'd rather drop it now, let's wait.	25:30
	We'll take it up again."	25:33
	Another help is to take breaks,	25:39
	breaks singly and breaks together.	25:42
	Anne Morrow Lindbergh has just come out with a book	25:46
	in which she gives some very mature reflections	25:49
	on the life of woman in this complex society.	25:52
	She doesn't think we can eliminate the complexities	25:56
	at least not most of them,	25:58
	but she does think that we can ease the strains.	26:00
	And she suggests periods of solitude,	26:04
	preferably for a brief time anyway, every day.	26:09
	But certainly periods during the year when	26:13
	a wife can go off entirely by herself,	26:16
	commune with the infinite,	26:20
	restore the body by lying in the sunshine,	26:22
	and looking on the stars.	26:26
	And then it's a good thing for the married couple,	26:30
	if they can arrange it, to go off together,	26:32
	where they can just have time and leisureliness,	26:38
	for hurry is one of the greatest enemies to understanding.	26:43
	It helps to have morning devotions together.	26:53
	My wife and I found it harder	26:57
	to do this when our five children were home	26:59
	than we do now, when they're all gone.	27:03
	Incidentally, we're up to nine grandchildren,	27:07
	and it doth not yet appear how many we shall be.	27:10
	(congregation laughs)	27:13
	Now, that the five children are gone,	27:16
	it's rather easier to keep a schedule.	27:20
	But we do find that a prayer and a song in the morning	27:23
	cause the trivial and the important to sort of shake down,	27:33
	and to take their proper places.	27:38
	And all of this gives a tone to the day.	27:41
	It is a venture.	27:51
	The way maybe fraught with severe trials.	27:54
	There may be clashes,	28:01
	and strains, but it is a splendid venture.	28:06
	There is no relationship of life	28:13
	in which love is deeper and joy more profound.	28:16
	Thomas Carlyle, every time he went past the spot	28:29
	where he had last seen his wife alive would uncover.	28:36
	Samuel Johnson, 30 years after his wife's death continued	28:44
	to remember her in his prayers.	28:51
	And as for the attachment of parents to children,	28:57
	Jesus took this as the pattern of the very love of God.	29:04
	He told a story about a prodigal son,	29:09
	but it's really a story about a prodigal's father.	29:11
	But when the boy came to himself and started home, we read,	29:16
	"And while he was yet afar off, his father saw him."	29:22
	It was not the boy who first saw the father,	29:29
	but the old man whose eyes were dimming,	29:33
	who first saw the son, for love opens the eyes.	29:35
	And very revealing is the sequel,	29:44
	when they were making merry over the boy who had returned,	29:46
	and the elder brother hearing about it was sullen.	29:49
	And the father went out to him,	29:53
	and the boy complained saying,	29:55
	"You never gave me a kid that I might make merry	29:56
	with my friends, and when the witless brother comes who	29:59
	has squandered thy living with harlots,	30:03
	you kill for him the fatted calf."	30:04
	And the father answered, "My son.	30:08
	All that I have is yours.	30:13
	But it was me to make merry,	30:20
	for this thy brother was dead, and he is alive.	30:23
	He was lost, and he is found."	30:29
	And as for the love of a mother,	30:37
	a friend of mine told me that his parents,	30:40
	some 30 years previously,	30:45
	had had a baby which died in infancy.	30:48
	They moved away from that town.	30:53
	And the father seemed to have forgotten all about it.	30:56
	But the mother, whenever there was an opportunity,	31:02
	would go back to visit a little grave.	31:08
	It is a venture, it is a splendid venture	31:20
	in which lie all that is richest in our lives.	31:27
	Will you raise and engage in prayer?	31:38
	Oh God, our heavenly Father, who has ordained	31:49
	that the ongoing of life should be through	31:54
	the union of lives.	31:57
	Bless thou all those who have engaged upon this venture.	32:00
	And grant onto them joy and peace, and triumph.	32:06
	And now, may God's peace, which passes all understanding,	32:15
	keep our hearts and thoughts	32:20
	in the knowledge and love of Christ Jesus our Lord,	32:23
	both now, and always.	32:28

Item Info

Title:

Roland H. Bainton - "Splendid Venture" (May 8, 1955)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ms3q30r

Date:

May 8, 1955

Speaker:

Bainton, Roland H.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0010
ref5243_9nh
uachapelsermaud
duke:627969
dcrau002064
ark:/87924/r4ms3q30r
b15d18da-3bf0-4989-ae87-74129b8d3b42

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Roland H. Bainton - "Splendid Venture" (May 8, 1955)

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