CHAPTER XVI MARRIAGE. LOVE. "Love is the root of creation; God's essence; worlds without number Lie in his bosom like children; he made them for this purpose only. Only to love and to be loved again, he breathed forth his spirit Into the slumbering dust, and upright standing, it laid its Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with a flame out of heaven." - - - - - - - - --LONGFELLOW. Love, that tender, inexplicable feeling which is the germinal essence of the human spirit, is the rudimental element of the human soul. It is, therefore, a Divine gift, a blessing which the Creator did not withdraw from his erring children, when they were driven from a paradise of innocence and loveliness into a world of desolation and strife. He left it as an invisible cord by which to draw the human heart ever upward, to a brighter home—the heavenly Eden. Love is the very essence of Divine law, the source of inspiration, even the fountain of life itself. It is spontaneous, generous, infinite. To its presence we are indebted for all that is good, true, and beautiful in Art and Nature. It endows humanity with countless virtues, and throws a mystic veil over our many faults. It is this feeling, this immutable law, which controls the destiny of the race. From its influence empires have fallen, scepters have been lost. Literature owes to Love its choicest gems.
The materialism of the nineteenth century has sought to degrade Love; to define it as purely physical. The result has been a corresponding degradation of art, and even literature has lost much of its lofty idealism. Nudity has become a synonym of vulgarity; Love, of lust. "Evil be to him who evil thinks." True Love never seeks to degrade its object; on the contrary, it magnifies every virtue, endows it with divinest attributes, and guards its chastity, or honor, at the sacrifice of its own life. It increases benevolence by opening the lover's heart to the wants of suffering humanity. Ideality is the canvas, and imagination the brush with which Love delineates the beauties of the adored. Love heightens spirituality, awakens hope, strengthens faith, and enhances devotion. It quickens the perceptions, intensifies the sensibilities, and redoubles the memory. It augments muscular activity, and imparts grace to every movement. The desire to love and to be loved is innate, and forms as much a part of our being as bone or reason. In fact, Love may be considered as the very foundation of our spiritual existence, as bone and reason are the essential bases of our physical and intellectual being. Every man or woman feels the influence of this emotion, sooner or later. It is the Kadesh-barnea of human existence; obedience to its intuitions insures the richest blessings of life, while neglect or perversion enkindles God's wrath, even as did the disobedience of the wandering Israelites. The one great fact which pervades the universe is action. The very existence of Love demands its activity, and, hence, the highest happiness is attained by a normal and legitimate development of this element of our being. The heart demands This emotion manifests itself in several phases, prominent among which is filial affection, the natural harmonizer of society. Paternal love includes a new element—protection. Greater than either, and second only in fortitude to maternal affection, is CONJUGAL LOVE.
With Swedenborg, we may assert, "that there is given love truly conjugal, which at this day is so rare, that it is not known what it is, and scarce that it is." The same author has defined this relation to be a union of Love and Wisdom. The fundamental law of conjugal love is fidelity to one love. God created but one Eve, and the essential elements of paternal and maternal love pre-suppose and necessitate, for their normal development, the Love of one only. Again, Love is the sun of woman's existence. Only under its influence does she unfold the noblest powers of her being. Woman's intuitions should therefore be taken as the true love-gauge. If she desire a plurality of loves, it must be a law of her nature; but is communism the desire of our wives and daughters? No! Every act which renders woman dear to us, denounces such an idea and reveals the exclusive sacredness of her Love. As condemning promiscuity in this relation, we may cite the lovers' pledges and oaths of fidelity, the self-perpetuity of Love itself, The consummation desired by all who experience this affection, is the union of souls in a true marriage. Whatever of beauty or romance there may be in the lover's dream, is enhanced and spiritualized in the intimate communion of married life. The crown of wifehood and maternity is purer, more divine, than that of the maiden. Passion is lost; the emotions predominate. The connubial relation is not an institution; it was born of the necessities and desires of our nature. "It is not good for man to be alone," was the Divine judgment, and so God created for him "an helpmate." Again, "Male and female created He them;" therefore, sex is as divine as the soul. It is often perverted, but so is reason, aye, so is devotion. The consummation of marriage involves the mightiest issues of life. It may be the source of infinite happiness or the seal of a living death. "Love is blind" is an old saying, verified by thousands of ill-assorted unions. Many unhappy marriages are traceable to one or both of two sources, Physical Weaknesses and Masquerading. Many are the candidates for marriage who are rendered unfit therefor from weaknesses of their sexual systems, induced by the violation of well-established physical laws. We cannot too strongly urge upon parents and guardians the imperative duty of teaching those youths who look to them for Masquerading is a modern accomplishment. Girls wear tight shoes, burdensome skirts, and corsets, all of which prove very injurious to their health. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, our young ladies are sorry specimens of womankind, and "palpitators," cosmetics, and all the modern paraphernalia of fashion are required to make them appear fresh and blooming. Man is equally to blame. A devotee to all the absurd devices of fashion, he practically asserts that "dress makes the man." But physical deformities are of far less importance than moral imperfections. Frankness is indispensable in love. Each should know the other's faults and virtues. Marriage will certainly disclose them; the idol falls and the deceived lover is transformed into a cold, unloving husband or wife. By far the greater number of unhappy marriages are attributable to this cause. In love especially, honesty is policy and truth will triumph. HISTORY OF MARRIAGE.Polygamy and Monogamy. We propose to give only a brief dissertation on the principles and arguments of these systems, with special reference to their representatives in the nineteenth century. Polygamy has existed in all ages. It is, and always has been, the result of moral degradation or wantonness. The Garden of Eden was no harem. Primeval nature knew no community of love. There was only the union of two "and the twain were made one flesh." Time passed; "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." The propensities of men were in the ascendant, and "God repented Him that He had created man." He directed Noah to take into the ark, two of every sort, male and female. But "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth," and tradition points to Polygamy as the generally recognized form of marriage among the ancients. In the Christian era the first religious system which incorporated polygamy as a principle was Mohammedanism. This system, which is so admirably adapted to the voluptuous The Mormon Church was founded by Joseph Smith, and professes to be in harmony with the Bible and a special revelation to its leading Saint. According to the Mormon code, "Love is a yearning for a higher state of existence, and the passions, properly understood, are feeders of the spiritual life;" and again, "nature is dual; to complete his organization a man must marry." The leading error of Mormonism is that it mistakes a legal permission for a Divine command. The Mormon logic may be premised as follows: the Mosaic law allowed polygamy; the Bible records it; therefore, the Bible teaches polygamy. A Mormon Saint can have not less than three wives but as many more as he can conveniently support. The eight fundamental doctrines of the Mormon Church are stated as follows: 1. God is a person with the flesh and form of a man. 2. Man is a part of the substance of God and will himself become a god. 3. Man is not created by God but existed from all eternity. 4. Man is not born in sin, and is not accountable for offenses other than his own. 5. The earth is a colony of embodied spirits, one of many such settlements in space. 6. God is president of the immortals, having under Him four orders of beings: (1.) Gods—i.e., immortal beings, possessed of a perfect organization of soul and body, being the final state of men who have lived on earth in perfect obedience to the law. (2.) Angels, immortal beings who have lived on earth in imperfect obedience to the law. (3.) Men, immortal beings in whom a living soul is united with a human body. (4.) Spirits, immortal beings, still waiting to receive their tabernacle of flesh. 7. Man, being one of the race of gods, became eligible, by means of marriage, for a celestial throne, and his household of Another organization, differing from the Mormons, in many of its radical principles, is that of the "Communists," popularly termed "Free Lovers." It is located at Lennox, Madison Co., N.Y. Its members advocate a system of "complex marriage" which they claim is instituted with a conscientious regard for the welfare of posterity. They disclaim "promiscuity," and assert that the tie which binds them together is as permanent and as sacred as that of marriage. Community of property is commensurate with freedom of Love. They define love to be "social appreciation," and this element in their code of civilization, which they deem superior to all others, is secondary to "bodily support." The principles upon which their social status is founded may be briefly summarized as follows: "Man offers woman support and love (unconditional). Woman enjoying freedom, self-respect, health, personal and mental competency, gives herself to man in the boundless sincerity of an unselfish union. State—, Communism." In this, as in all forms of polygamous marriages, love is made synonymous with sexuality, and its purely spiritual element is lost. In every instance this spiritual element should constitute the basis of marriage, which, without it, is nothing more than legal prostitution. Without it, the selfish, degrading, animal propensities run rampant, while the emotions with all their boundless sweetness lie dormant. Woman is regarded as only a plaything to gratify the animal caprice. That Monogamy is a law of nature is evident from the fact that it fulfills the three essential conditions which form the basis of true marriage: (1.) The development of the individual (2.) The welfare of society. (3.) The reproduction of the species. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL.PHYSICALLY. Reciprocated love produces a general exhilaration of the system. The elasticity of the muscles is increased, the circulation is quickened, and every bodily function is stimulated. The duties of life are performed with a zest and alacrity never before experienced. "It is not possible for human beings to attain their full stature of humanity, except by loving long and perfectly. Behold that venerable man! He is mature in judgment, perfect in every action and expression, and saintly in goodness. You almost worship as you behold. What rendered him thus perfect? What rounded off his natural asperities, and moulded up his virtues? Love mainly. It permeated every pore, so to speak, and seasoned every fiber of his being, as could nothing else. Mark that matronly woman. In the bosom of her family, she is more than a queen and goddess combined. All her looks and actions express the outflowing of some or all of the human virtues. To know her is to love her. She became thus perfect, not in a day or a year, but by a long series of appropriate efforts. Then by what? Chiefly in and by love, which is specifically adapted thus to develope this maturity." But all this occurs only when there is a normal exercise of the sexual propensities. Excessive indulgence in marital pleasures deadens all the higher faculties, love included, and results in an utter prostration of the bodily powers. The Creator has endowed man and woman with passions, the suppression of which leads to pain, their gratification to pleasure, their satiety to disgust. Excessive marital indulgence produces abnormal conditions of the generative organs and not unfrequently leads to incurable disease. Many cases of uterine disease are traceable to this cause. MORALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY. In no country where the polygamous system prevails do we find a code of political and social ethics which recognizes the rights and claims of the individual. The condition of woman is that of the basest slave, a slave to the caprice and tyranny of her master. Communism raises her from the slough of slavery, but subjects her to the level of prostitution. An inevitable sequence of polygamy is a decline of literature and science. The natural tendency of THE WELFARE OF SOCIETY.The general law of ethics, that "whatever is beneficial to the individual, contributed to the highest good of society and vice versa," applies with equal force to the hygienic conditions of marriage. Each family, like the ancient Roman household, is the prototype of the natural government under which it lives. Wherever the marriage relation is regarded as sacred, there you will find men of pure hearts and noble lives. Of all foreign nations the Germans are celebrated for their sacred regard of woman, and the duties of marriage, and all scholars from the age of Tacitus to the present day, have concurred in attributing the elevation of woman to the pure-minded Teutons. In America, the law recognizes only Monogamy; but domestic unhappiness is a prominent feature of our national life; therefore, argues the would-be free-lover, monogamy does not accord with the best interests of mankind. The fallacy lies in the first premise. Legally, our marriage system is monogamous but socially and practically it is not! Prostitution is the source of this domestic infelicity. The "mistress" sips the sweet nectar that is denied to the deceived wife. Legislators have battled with intemperance, but have done comparatively little to banish from our midst this necessary (?) evil. They recoil with disgust from this abyss of iniquity and disease. Within it is coiled a hydra-headed monster, which invades our hearthstones, contaminates our social atmosphere, and whose very breath is laden with poisonous vapors, the inexhaustible source of all evil. The perverted appetites of mankind are mistaken for the natural desires and necessities of our being; and, accordingly, various arguments have been advanced to prove that monogamy is not conducive to social developement. It is curious that no one of these arguments refers to the health and well-being of THE PERPETUATION OF THE SPECIES.The third essential object of marriage is the perpetuation of the species. The desire for offspring is innate in the heart of every true man or woman. It is thus a law of our nature, and, as such, must have its legitimate sphere. The essential features of reproduction proclaim monogamy to be the true method of procreation. Promiscuity would render the mother unable to designate the father of her children. Among lower animals, pairing is an instinctive law whenever the female is |