Lecture Eleven. MARRIAGE. Unhappy Marriages--Marriage has its Laws--The Second Question in Life--Be sure you are Right--For Better or for Worse--Know whom thou Marriest--Marriage a Holy Institution--Marriage should be made a Study--Marriage is not for Children--Early Marriages Inadvisable--What are Early Marriages?--Influence of an Ignorant Wife--Woman the Hope of the World--Married Life must be lived well--Love should rule all.
Our present theme for our young female friends is Marriage. In treating it we feel impressed with its solemn and practical importance. Talk of Marriage as we will, it is a serious and stern reality. It takes us by the hand and leads us into the great temple of life where duties stand ministering around the solemn altar, and the baptism of love is followed by the quick discipline of trial. Young, single existence is but the vestibule of real life, where anticipation weaves a golden web, bearing but a faint resemblance to the web of actual life. The youthful imagination is apt to dress the institution of Marriage in too many garlands, and to consider it full of ethereal joys and paradisaical blessedness such as can exist only in the chambers of an untaught fancy. That the natural fruitage of true Marriage is peace and blessedness is a pleasing fact which we can not contemplate but with delight, and for which we can not be too grateful. But it must always be understood that the joys of marriage are natural, and such as grow out of the performance of duty and a life of truthfulness. They are conditioned upon obedience to the matrimonial laws. It is not all the married that are happy. If you would find misery double-distilled, you may find it in awful and ruinous abundance among the married who entered their real life in the whirl of enthusiastic delight. There is every possible degree of anguish in the married life, from the unbreathed unrest of the thinly clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in loud denunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw back the vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black waves of distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire and dirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of the world's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubt that the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility. Like every other good, it must be rightly used or it turns to evil. The good of good things is mostly in their use. Life is good if rightly used, but oh, how bad when wholly abused! So with Marriage. The best things become instruments of the direst evil when wrested from their true use.
The first lesson to learn in relation to Marriage is, that its fruits of peace and joy hang on the boughs of obedience to its regulations, conformity to its laws. Who would be happy in the married life must enter into it well and live it righteously. It has laws to be obeyed, regulations to be observed, principles to be submitted to, without which it has no joys, no elysian fields of bliss and blessedness, no buds and flowers of virtue and happiness.
It will never do to go blindly into a state of such intimate relations. Here soul meets with soul face to face. Propensities, passions, desires, inclinations, aspirations, capacities, powers, stand up side by side and press against each other, either to please or fret and chafe each other. Tastes, dispositions, feelings, either join in sweet, according friendship, or rankle in disagreeable contact. Marriage is a union, intimate, strong-bound, and vitally active. The union is a compound or a mixture; it is natural, congenial, pleasing, or it is forced, inharmonious, and revolting. Which it shall be we are to determine before we enter it. We are not to shut our eyes to reason and common sense, and marry whoever offers. Young women who do so may live to repent it. If there is any period in a woman's whole life when her sharpest eye, her keenest apprehension, her soundest judgment, and her most religious seriousness are needed, it is when she proposes to herself the question, "Shall I accept in marriage the hand that is offered me?" It is the second greatest question of her life. It is the question, the answer of which is to wring briny tears out of her heart or baptize it in the waters of refreshing sympathy.
I once knew a merchant who used to say that "Goods well bought were half sold." The idea is equally good when applied to the subject of Marriage. A Marriage well entered is a life half lived. It is hard to make a profit on badly bought goods. So it is hard to live a good and happy life in Marriage bonds that bind and gall the heart that wears them. I used to be a farmer, and I then learned that a balky horse would often work well in an easy harness, while a good horse would be tricky and stubborn in a collar that chafed. So I have often seen bad people who lived very happily in the married life, so far as their personal relations were concerned, while good people chafed and grieved in sad matrimonial inharmony. Half the victory is in starting the battle right. A man of more good sense than refinement once said, "Be sure you are right, then go ahead." It is the utterance of wisdom, and is as applicable to the subject before us as any other. "Be sure you are right." We are not only to be right, but we are to know it. There is to be no guess-work about it—no wish-work or hope-work about it. It is to be knowledge-work. Applied to the subject in hand, young women are to know that they are right in their Marriage alliances; are to know that they have bargained with men after their own heart. They are not to guess they are going to get pretty good husbands, nor hope they are, nor to believe they are from what personal friends have said.
They are not to rely upon common report, nor the opinion of friends, nor a fashionable acquaintance, but upon a personal knowledge of the individual's life and character. How can another know what you want in a companion? You alone know your own heart. If you do not know it you are not fit to be married. No one else can tell what fills you with pleasing and grateful emotions. You only know when the spring of true affection is touched by the hand of a congenial spirit. It is for you to know who asks your hand, who has your heart, who links his life with yours. If you know the man who can make true answer to your soul's true love, whose soul is all kindred with yours, whose life answers to your ideal of manly demeanor, you know who would make you a good husband. But if you only fancy that he is right, or guess, or believe, or hope, from a little social interchange of words and looks, you have but a poor foundation on which to build hopes of future happiness. A young man and a dear friend once said to me, "I am going to take her for better or for worse." The remark ran over me like a chill breath of winter. I shuddered at the thought. "For better or for worse." All in doubt. Going to marry, yet not sure he was right. The lady he spoke of was a noble young woman, intellectual, cultivated, pious, accustomed to his sphere of life. They were going to marry in uncertainty. Both were of fine families; both excellent young people. To the world it looked like a desirable match. To them it was going to be "for better or for worse." They married. The woman stayed in his home one year and left it, declaring he was a good man and a faultless husband, but not after her heart. She stayed away one year and came back; lived with him one year more and died. Sad tale. It proved for the worse, and all because they did not know each other; if they had they would not have married. I once heard of a woman who married a man to get rid of him. It is a dangerous riddance. Equally dangerous is it to marry a man to find him out. "Know whom thou marriest," is the voice of wisdom. Yes, the question of Marriage is one of solemn import. It is a life-question. It is a final settlement of a great demand of our nature. It is the decision of the heart's earthly weal or woe. It is our social life or death. It is planting the seeds for the moral harvest of life. It is the adjustment of a great religious question, the submission to a solemn ordinance of God. Yes, Marriage is a divine institution. It is not of earthly origin, though it is often prostituted to earthly uses. It is a God-made arrangement for human development and happiness, and woe be to him who defiles it with sensuous abuses. It is before the Church, before any of the solemn ordinances of God's house, the primal decree of the Father for his human children. To degrade or abuse the Marriage covenant is blasphemy, irreverence, sacrilegious wickedness. If one would enter the portals of the church bowed in reverence to God, much more should he thus enter the sanctuary of Marriage. If he should sit reverently at the table of the Lord's Supper, much more should he sit thus in the bower of the hymeneal life. If he should bow his head in solemn meekness in the baptismal rite, much more should he bend lowly in this relation. If he should kneel in pious prayer before the throne of grace, so he should humble himself before God at the life-union altar. There is no more serious step in life, none more important, and none that should be more religiously taken.
In this view of the subject, what a sad picture does the world present! How trifling, giddy, thoughtless! Among the multitudes who marry, how few marry in the light of wisdom and under the sanction of religion! Worldliness moves a great multitude in the formation of this union. Profit, gain, standing! These are mighty things. Principle, virtue, religion, happiness, must be sacrificed on the altar of worldly ambition. Woman becomes a base creature by thus pandering to earthly ends. Then worse than this, still greater multitudes are prompted to this union by sensuous desires—base animalism. Oh, to what a sink of iniquity, what a pool of pollution, what a stagnant pit of moral rottenness is the Marriage relation sunk by the unhallowed and unbridled sensuality of thousands who enter it! If there is any place in the world where the voice of God should be heard ringing in pealing thunder-tones the commands of virtue and religion, it is in the seclusion of the Marriage relation. Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with a profounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. To degrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I should induce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union, to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and determine to enter it under the sanctions of true religion, and demand a like state of mind in her companion, that they might live to be blessings to each other, I should feel richly remunerated for my labor. I treat this subject now and have at former times with a view to elevate the minds of youth in relation to it.
It is in vain to try to make the world moral and religious while the great institutions of social life are corrupted and corrupting. At the very bottom of adult life lies the institution of Marriage. To reform the world we must begin with this. If we can get men and women well married, the work of reform is half done; life is half lived. It is next to impossible to make good and happy an ill-assorted pair. They work against each other almost in spite of themselves. They are like a steamboat with its wheels playing in opposite directions. They make a great noise and a terrible jarring, and put forth desperate efforts, but no forward motion is produced.
It would be well if we had more judicious books on Marriage, designed for youth. One on the Philosophy of Marriage; one on the Duties of Marriage; one on the Religion of Marriage; or all these subjects treated in one book might be very profitable; and if such a book were designed for high schools, academies, and colleges, and made a study, as is moral science and natural religion, it might be made eminently useful. There is a science of Marriage. It should be developed and made a study. Some strong mind and pure heart, baptized in the spirit of divine truth and love, should write it out. I know the youth of our country would receive it gladly and study it with great profit. What is most wanted is thought and enlightenment on the subject. Thought is the grand lever of reform. This thing of thinking is what makes men great and good. It is the grand plowshare that turns up the old soil of error and despotism and reveals the hidden treasures of truth. Get people to thinking and they will be likely to think themselves right in the end. We want thought on the subject of Marriage—calm, consecutive, serious thought. Nothing else will do. We have passion, zeal, impulse, imagination; but we lack thought. Thought is the helm of passion, the ballast of imagination, the compass of impulse. Let youth think on the subject as they ought, and they will marry well.
I remarked that the institution of Marriage was at the bottom of adult life. This is a truth, and it is a thought for the girls. Marriage was never designed for children. It is for men and women. It is good for men and women; but it does not follow from this that it is good for children. It would not be good even if children knew how to marry wisely. They are both physically and mentally incapacitated for so solemn and important a relation. They are immature in body and mind, in heart and head. Their judgments are unsound. Their affections are not to be trusted. They are children in every sense of the word, and can only make children's work of married life. The wisest and best in early adult life can be none too well prepared for the great duties of married life—how can children be prepared? It is impossible. One of the greatest evils of our time is the too prevalent custom of entering early into the Marriage relations. Children make bad selections of companions. In nine cases out of ten they choose differently from what they would a few years later. They have no fixed characters. They do not know what their opinions will be. Their tastes are not formed. Their aims in life are undetermined. What they were made for and what they live for they have scarcely asked. The arguments against early Marriages are many. I have not time to enumerate them or to show their force. I have never heard of but one argument in favor of early marriages. That is founded in the false idea of marrying in mutual ignorance of each other. It is said the characters of the parties are more pliable in early youth, so that they will assimilate to each other the more readily. But if they are not already assimilated they ought not to marry. If each has got to give up his character to live in peace, it is a proof that they are wrongly matched. Those really fitted for each other find their happiness in the harmony of each other's characters. Their two characters blend together like concordant sounds, or two streams of running water. The secret of true Marriage is in mutuality of character, harmony of sentiment and action, congeniality of spirit. Without this unity there can be no true Marriage; no real happiness or utility in the married life.
In all true Marriages the twain become one; one in feeling, aim, and spirit, one in reason, sentiment, and love. And when this does not exist before Marriage, it can not reasonably be looked for after. That this harmony shall be perfect we can not expect, because there are no perfect characters in this world, and no two persons at perfect unity in spirit. But unless there is a general harmony there should be no Marriage. Now, how can children know whether this harmony exists, when their own characters are unformed, their powers undeveloped? But it may be asked, what we call an early Marriage? About this there may be a difference of opinion. What some would call early, others would call late. Our ideas on this point should be founded in physiological and mental science. There is a true test by which to settle this question. That test is found in the human constitution. Any Marriage is early that is consummated before adult womanhood is attained—womanhood of mind, heart, soul, and character. Any Marriage before eighteen years of age is a very early Marriage; before twenty it is early. As a general rule, between twenty and twenty-five it is timely, though with many it is early at twenty-two, and some never get old enough to marry. A mind untaught, a heart undisciplined, a spirit unsubdued, in a civilized community, is not fit to be married. Such a character is never old enough.
Above all things, before Marriage, there should be time enough for a generous education; for a wise preparation for practical life. No young woman can be educated in any practical and general sense before twenty-two, no matter what may be her opportunities. Life ought to be understood; its practical aspects should be fairly and wisely contemplated; its principal duties should be well weighed; its trials, temptations, and besetments should be considered; all that must be done and borne should be the subject of thoughtful meditation before a woman should dare to set her foot upon the hallowed ground of matrimony. No child is capable of considering such grave subjects. An adult mind is scarcely equal to the task. When I say young women should have time to be educated, I mean all young women. It is true, all will not be educated in our schools, but all must have some sort of an education; they must have some experience, observation, contact with men and things, a knowledge of life; must learn to rely upon themselves, and learn moral duty and what the world expects of a wife. The early married must also necessarily be married in ignorance; and as a general rule we may say, who marries in ignorance will remain in ignorance. An ignorant wife! Poor thing! How sad the spectacle! What can she do with life? She will make an ignorant mother and rear ignorant children, and exert an ignorant influence all through her life. She will perpetuate the absurdities of ignorant people. She will do the work of ignorance with her husband and family. Still worse is a neighborhood of ignorant wives. A State of ignorant wives would bring barbarism again. And how could it be otherwise, if all girls should marry in their girlhood? It is the girls that live to womanhood before they marry that redeem and polish society. Those who marry in girlhood are drawbacks on society. They are dead weights holding back the wheels of progress. There are but few truly educated and influential women in the country who married before they were twenty-five—many of them not till after. They are now the pride and glory of their husbands, of the communities and States in which they live. I hold that a noble and influential woman is an honor to the country and a pillar of civil and religious liberty. Every such woman is a central sun radiating intellectual and moral light, diffusing strength and life to all about her. The hope of the country—ay, of the world—is in its women; I may say its wives. Now and then a wife will develop and educate herself after she is married, if she is fortunate enough to get a husband who will encourage and help her in the work, even if she is married young; but the great mass will remain in statu quo. If they marry ignorant they will remain ignorant. I can not press too strongly this point of preparation for Marriage.
There is more depends upon it than we at first imagine. Every wife is to be the center of a family. Boys and girls, men and women, are to go out from her to live in the world. Scan it closely and you will find that the world will be modeled very much after its wives. If we have great and good men, great and good institutions, States and countries, it is because we have great and good wives. A wife will be happy just about in proportion to the amount of good she does. That amount of good will depend very much upon the education of her girlhood; so that view it in whatever light we will, a woman's life, usefulness, and happiness depend in no small degree upon the length and character of her girlhood. If she remains unmarried till she is twenty-three or twenty-five, and develops and cultivates herself as she ought, she will be almost sure to make a good and useful woman, an ornament and an inspiration to the circle in which she moves. If she marries at sixteen or eighteen she will be very likely to make just what she is—an immature, unfinished specimen of humanity; nothing more, nothing less.
One point more I would dwell upon a moment. It is this: The married life, though entered never so well, and with all proper preparation, must be lived well or it will not be useful or happy. Married life will not go itself, or if it does it will not keep the track. It will turn off at every switch, and fly off at every turn or impediment. It needs a couple of good conductors who understand the engineering of life. Good watch must be kept for breakers ahead. The fires must be kept up by a constant addition of the fuel of affection. The boilers must be kept full and the machinery in order, and all hands at their posts, else there will be a smashing up, or life will go hobbling or jolting along, wearing and tearing, breaking and bruising, leaving some heads and hearts to get well the best way they can. It requires skill, prudence, and judgment to lead this life well, and these must be tempered with forbearance, charity, and integrity. Individual rights, opinions, and feelings must be respected; individual duties must be faithfully performed; the proprieties of courtesy and kindness must be most strictly observed; violations of politeness and affection must be prohibited; ebullitions of temper must be considered as sad and lamentable improprieties, to be mourned over but always quickly and readily forgiven; the motto of each should be, "I will be, do, and bear all I can and ask as little as possible." A constant and perfect agreement in opinion and feeling between the parties must never be expected. The rule should be, that they will agree just so far as possible without a violation of the individual conscience, and when they can not agree further they should agree to disagree, with mutual respect for each other's opinions and mutual esteem and love for each other. Neither one should attempt or wish to set up a petty and matrimonial tyranny over the other. Each should think, feel, and act in kindly independence; and each should encourage the other in independent thought and action with a view to individual culture and mutual benefit. But below all thought and back of all action there should be a strong, earnest, two-fold principle of benevolence and affection. Come what may, love should rule over all. This should pervade and magnetize the whole life. Love should utter its melodious tones and breathe its sweet spirit in every department of the united life. This is the life that should be determined upon before Marriage, this the life that the parties should mark out for themselves in all its detail, before they enter into the Marriage covenant; and this the life when lived that is blessed and blissful beyond expression.
I said in the outset of this discourse that the young are apt to hang too many garlands about the married life. This is so as this life is generally lived. But if it is wisely entered and truthfully lived, it is more beautiful and happy than any have imagined. It is the true life which God has designed for his children, replete with joy, delightful, improving, and satisfactory in the highest possible earthly degree. It is the hallowed home of virtue, peace, and bliss. It is the antechamber of heaven, the visiting place of angels, the communing ground of kindred spirits. Let all young women who would reap such joys and be thus blessed and happy, learn to live the true life, and be prepared to weave for their brows the true wife's perennial crown of goodness.
