Marriage : Part 2

Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women
by George S. Weaver

(Page 12 of 16)

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.

Fowler and Wells, Publishers, New York, 1856.