---
title: 'Plumer’s Directions For a Happy Household'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2024-03-25
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2024-plumers-directions-for-a-happy-household
---

# Plumer’s Directions For a Happy Household

1\. Be humble. ‘Only by pride cometh contention.’

2\. ‘Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.’

3\. Find your own happiness in trying to make others happy.

4\. Mind your own business. Meddle not. Be not officious.

5\. Beware of a fretful, suspicious, or censorious temper.

6\. Overcome evil with good. Bless and curse not.

7\. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law.’

8\. Endeavour daily to add something to the common stock of useful knowledge in your family.

9\. Do not magnify the trials or afflictions of life.

10\. Beware of sloth. There is no greater enemy of peace and happiness.

11\. Make it your business to serve God.

12\. Keep out of debt. ‘Owe no man anything.’ Duns breed bad tempers and mean dispositions.

13\. ‘Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.’ There is no happy family, that forgets that precept.

14\. Keep the end of life in view. This will repress many vain wishes and chasten immoderate desires.

15\. Let your prayers be frequent and fervent.

16\. Never listen to scandal nor backbiting.

17\. Set the Lord always before you. Seek his glory. Do and suffer his will with readiness.

18\. Let Christ be all and in all. He is everything to us poor sinners. He is the chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.

19\. Grieve not for things, which cannot be helped.

20\. Trust in the Lord forever.

— [**William S. Plumer**](/authors/william-swan-plumer), *The Grace of Christ, or Sinners Saved By Unmerited Kindness* (1853), pp. 291-292