Volume 16 / Part 4 — Marriage In The Nineteenth Century.

“Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.”—Matt. xxiv. 35.

It is only truth that is immutable in this world, and only truth's representative that dare speak to-day the same language it spoke eighteen, twelve, or three centuries ago.

Truth cannot progress, for it partakes of the nature of God's perfection; it is not an ideal of our own evolving, susceptible of improvement as our knowledge grows wider, but a type towards which we are, on the contrary, making slow stages of assimilation. Of all individual parts of truth, hardly one of which remains in our day unassailed, none is so fiercely attacked as the truth about marriage. And yet, as we have shown in a previous paper,232 almost every argument against it has repeatedly been put forward by barbarians and Romans, Byzantine emperors and feudal chiefs, and borne out by all the imposing display of military force, legal servility, and even ecclesiastical truculence. One might almost say of the agitation against marriage in our day, “What has been will be, and what will be has been.” If it is no longer in the individual passions of kings and nobles that the conflict centres, it is still a “sovereign” who plays the part of Philip Augustus or Henry VIII.—the “sovereign people.” Instead of one mighty colossus, it is a legion of personally obscure individuals which the church finds opposed to her; but the principle is the same, the issue is identical. What councils and embassies did formerly is now done oftener and in privacy; new agencies have widened the possibilities of communication, of discussion, and of adjustment, and causes are more rapidly multiplied, as well as more speedily settled. The press has lent its power to the altar, and redeemed, in part, its too well-earned reputation as a pander and a tempter; and besides these new helps, we have, as of old, all those oft-tried resources of personal eloquence, canonical censures, and grievous penances.

Still the question is exactly the same in the nineteenth as it was in all preceding centuries: Shall passion or reason rule mankind? Shall the most sacred of all rights of property be protected and maintained, or shall communism be allowed gradually to extirpate the human race?

The historian Rohrbacher, whom we have often quoted in the paper referred to above, specially insists upon the confusion which the legalized disruption or total disregard of the marriage vow would introduce into society, and supports his opinion by that of De Maistre. He also adduces the argument that, since the creation of man in the earthly Paradise was a perfect and complete act, and only one woman was there joined to one man, therefore the union of one man and one woman was distinctly God's type of what he meant all future unions to be. We might speak of many Scripture proofs of the original institution of marriage being a state of perpetual monogamy until death, but such proofs would [pg 777] involve too lengthy a sketch of one portion of the subject, and this aspect has been so often discussed that we turn with a feeling of relief to any less hackneyed view of the question.

Speaking broadly, we may say that the Hebrews were the first, as they were for a long time the only, people whose laws protected both the honor and the property of women. Because they did so, they were also most stringent as regards the tie of marriage. Again, with them ancestry and descent were of paramount importance, and every family jealously guarded its record and registers; this also implied a strict protection of marriage, and, in fact, would have been impossible without it. Even when dispensations were allowed the Jews “because of the hardness of their hearts,” the son of the first wife was not to be put aside for the son of the second, if the latter were more pleasing to her husband than the former, and this because the sacred rights acquired at her betrothal were absolutely inalienable.233 In the marriages mentioned in the Old Testament, the consent of the woman is always formally asked,234 and she is considered competent to inherit property and transfer it to her husband.235

Among other nations of antiquity, the more truth was obscured in their religious forms, the more degraded became their ideal of marriage. This is patent even among such civilized nations as the Greeks and Romans; the whole of mythology is a deification of the passion of lust, and a caricature on marriage. Still, where greater genius abounds, there also we find glimpses of a higher morality. For instance, in Homer's magnificent poems, conjugal love and fidelity stand out nobly as the themes of his especial admiration. It would require a thorough examination of many of the passages of the Iliad, and greater space than we have now before us (since this idea can only be used here as a collateral one), to bring out the full force of this striking fact, and some day perhaps it may be our good fortune to return to this topic; suffice it to say at present, that any one who reads Homer attentively will be struck by the majestic attitude of Juno, the constant protectress of the Greeks, and by the hearty sympathy shown by the poet in a struggle undertaken purely to vindicate the dignity of marriage and the rights of hospitality. This is perhaps even more obvious from the fact that even the good personages of the poem, the self-sacrificing and devoted Andromache, the noble Hector, the infirm and guiltless Priam, are all included in the sweeping misfortune which is the swift and just retribution of the cowardly rape of Helen. The vindication of the principle of marriage is evident, while in the Odyssey its glorification is even more obvious. This illustration, for which we have to thank a very zealous and learned religious whose kindness put the suggestion entirely at our own disposal, is one which it is worth while for thoughtful persons to consider, as it gives a far greater moral importance, and consequently a more perfect artistic interest, to one of the few colossi of the intellectual world.

The law of Jesus Christ succeeded the preparatory dispensation of Moses, and perfected all its enactments, marriage among the rest. It gave the marriage contract an added dignity by making it the image of the union—single and indivisible—of Christ and the church, and by elevating it into a sacrament; in other [pg 778] words, a means of sanctifying and special grace. In this is certainly the secret of the church's inflexibility with regard to marriage. Since by it a distinct and sacramental grace was vouchsafed, it followed that this grace in itself was sufficient to enable the contracting parties, provided they faithfully corresponded to it, to remain holily in the state of matrimony until death; so that, whenever any serious breach took place between them, the church could reasonably argue that the fault lay with their dispositions, not with the contract itself. In the old law, marriage, though holy, was not a sacrament, and was susceptible of greater relaxations; but in the new law, with a higher dignity added to it, and more abundant grace attached to it, it is too strong to need concessions and too noble to wish for them.

The Hebrews also, in propagating their own race, used the only means then in their power of propagating the knowledge of the true God; but in the new dispensation we have substituted a generation according to the spirit for the previous generation according to the flesh. Polygamous marriages among the Jews were a mysterious channel provisionally used for the increase and maintenance of God's worship upon earth; but, since the coming of Christ, men have been won by the Word of God, the preaching of his servants, the sufferings of his martyrs, and the learning of his disciples. Those who are now constantly born into his fold are born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”236 Having said so much upon the historical and Scriptural aspect of marriage, we leave it to others to dispute the particular meaning of such and such texts, and the particular inferences to be drawn from the context, and go back to the church's firm stand upon this matter.

Not only has she been the foremost champion of the integrity of marriage in past ages, but she is now almost its only one. No body of such force or numbers exists in the world, which alone gives her the priority among the upholders of Christian marriage; and when the tenets of the few other bodies to whom marriage is sacred are examined, they will be found to be inspired and created by her principles, so far as they refer to this matter.

Of the Anglican communion, especially in its more advanced branches, it is sufficient to say that, having better than any other body preserved the forms, it has as its reward attained to more of the spirit, of a “church,” and consequently inculcates a higher morality. But the following testimony, which, from the name of the sheet furnishing it (the Reformed Missionary), we suppose represents some other Protestant body, is more interesting because more unexpected. A Catholic paper of Nov. 16, 1872, the Standard, has preserved this testimony for us. Under the title of “The Divorce Question Again,” it discusses church authority and its relation to the civil law, and uses the following strong language: “Spiritual interests and spiritual discipline belong to that supernatural order of grace which has its home in the bosom of the Christian church.... There are many things besides loose divorce legislation which the state either tolerates or legalizes, but which the church cannot sanction or countenance for a single instant without committing spiritual suicide. And if the state should expressly dictate to the church a line of action at variance with the plain teaching of Christ, then it [pg 779] would be our solemn duty to obey God rather than men.... The church must interpret God's Word, and exercise spiritual discipline in accordance therewith, no matter what course the state may take in disposing of kindred questions. As Dr. Woolsey has expressed it: ‘Whatever be the attitude of the state, the church must stand upon the principles of the New Testament as she expounds them, and apply them to all within her reach!’ ”

What is here said of the “state” may be applied to the people, the press, popular license, and all the modern agencies which the evil one has added to his former royal and learned tools. But if among earnest though mistaken Christians we find such auxiliaries as the Reformed Missionary and the eloquent sermons of Anglican divines,237 we have also to encounter such authorities as the following on the side of passion and licentiousness: “Dr. Colenso, embarrassed by the obstinate adherence to polygamy which he observed among the Kaffirs, came to the resolution, after conference, it is said, with other Anglican authorities of the highest rank, to remove the difficulty by a process which, though adopted in a well-known case by Luther and Melancthon, had not previously received the official sanction of Anglican bishops. As polygamy would not yield to Protestantism, Dr. Colenso agreed to consider polygamy ‘a Scriptural mode of existence.’ Here are his own words: ‘I must confess that I feel very strongly that the usual practice of enforcing the separation of wives from their husbands, upon their conversion to Christianity, is quite unwarrantable, and opposed to the plain teaching of our Lord.’ And then he proves, of course from the Bible, that polygamy is not inconsistent with the all-holy religion of the Gospel. Here is the proof: ‘What is the use,’ he asks, ‘of our reading to them (the heathen) the Bible stories of Abraham, Israel, and David, with their many wives?’ But Dr. Colenso was not without support in his view on polygamy. ‘The whole body of American missionaries in Burmah,’ he observes, ‘after some difference of opinion, came to the unanimous decision to admit in future polygamists of old standing to communion, but not to offices in the church (as if the last were a greater privilege than the first!)’ ‘I must say,’ he continues, ‘that this appears to me the only right and reasonable course!’ ”

At the beginning of this extract, we read that Dr. Colenso was embarrassed by the obstinate adherence to polygamy among the Kaffirs. This means, we infer, that he had originally withstood this heathen practice. Why had he done so? If he believed it sufficiently immoral to attack it, he was guilty of violating his conscience in ceasing his attack; if he had always believed it “Scriptural” or allowable, he was guilty of hypocrisy in attacking it at all. Then, when he asks, “What is the use of our reading to them the Bible stories of Abraham, Israel, and David, with their many wives?” he gives us unconsciously another advantage by tacitly confessing the necessity of a divinely inspired interpreter of the Bible. If Dr. Colenso had been a Catholic, the difficulty would not have existed. Does he suppose that Catholic converts among savage nations do not hear the same stories? But in their case, a teaching and speaking church comes to their rescue, and explains what otherwise would seem dark. It is strange to hear a Protestant [pg 780] Christian, bred up on the rule of “the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible,” hesitate as to the effect of certain stories in the Bible. If the poor Kaffirs were to be evangelized upon the principle that a Bible precedent was practically a permission for all time, they would soon have Judiths and Jaels among them, as well as Abrahams, Israels, and Davids.

In the Times (London) of Dec. 20, 1872, on the occasion of a public “Day of Intercession” for more missionaries, we read the following stringent criticism upon the body which of all others most nearly approaches the ideal of a church: “The Church of England,” says the Times, “utterly abandons large regions on the ground that in tropical climes there will be polygamy or an equivalent disregard of the marriage ties, and that no preaching can prevail against it”—a confession of powerlessness which quite coincides with what we have said of Dr. Colenso. Still it is not fair to class the Anglican communion, despite this weak shrinking from a difficult task, with the more systematic deserters from the championship of duty; but, if we are grieved and astonished at her defection under certain circumstances, what shall we say of the following breach of ecclesiastical discipline on the part of those whose very names argue in this case a departure from the path of known duty? In the New York World of the 5th of January, 1873, we read among the announcements of business transacted in the mayor's office the previous day this startling disclosure: “During the day the mayor was waited upon by a wedding-party, the principals of which were Michael M'Clannahan and Mary Donovan, who wished to be united in matrimony without going to the trouble of getting up a public church celebration. Mr. H—— performed the duty according to the statute, and the bride and bridegroom went on their way rejoicing.”

It is not for us to judge these persons, nor speculate upon the motives that led them to take such a step; but the occurrence is nevertheless a sign of the demoralization which is every day on the increase among our people.

Polygamy, under the name of Mormonism, is still tolerated and protected in the United States, and the annals of divorce in the states where Mormonism is illegal quite make up the deficiency. In Connecticut, according to the deposition of the Rev. Dr. Woolsey, President of Yale College, made before the Western Social Science Congress in Chicago, the ratio of divorce is one in every eight marriages. We were told by a distinguished New England convert that the Vermont marriage law was practically so lax that the following “cause” for a divorce was considered legal: A couple, not very long married, mutually wished for a separation, simply on the score that they were dissatisfied with their bargain. They went to a lawyer to ascertain the technicalities of the case, and were told—appearances having to be saved!—that some specific cause must be alleged. The easiest was cruelty. But the parties had never been violent; so the lawyer suggested that the husband should, in his presence, give his wife a “blow.” This was soon accomplished by a light slap on the cheek of the willing “victim”; cruelty was pleaded, and the divorce obtained.

In Rhode Island, the proportion of divorces to marriages in 1869 was one to fourteen, and the law of that state leaves it practically to the discretion of the courts to annul any ill-assorted marriage on the ground of [pg 781] uncongenial temper, desertion, drunkenness, or any sort of bad conduct. In that year, out of 166 divorces, only 66 were granted on the plea of adultery, while it must also be borne in mind that this grave charge is often unjustly and maliciously made to cover some shameful behavior on the part of the plaintiff, or to gratify his or her revenge. Speaking of a clergyman who was reported to have married one man successively to five wives, all of whom were living at the same time, a Protestant paper comments thus on the story: “It may be true or false. It is not altogether improbable. It suggests very serious reflections, as indicating what is possible under our laws, and the course things are taking in American society.” The paper goes on to speak of the clergyman's responsibility in such a case, and although advocating the desirability, “for many reasons,” of the office of solemnizing marriage being “confined almost entirely to ministers of the Gospel,” does not see that it stultifies itself directly after by explaining that “the trust is reposed in them, not by any right to it on their part, as holding an ecclesiastical office, but on account of their position and general character(!). They are able to guard marriage, and give it a religious character and sanction. But they act, so far as the law goes, simply as civil magistrates.”

And let us add that here is precisely the evil, and that as long as clergymen are lowered to the level of magistrates, loose morals will never be uprooted.

The Nation of March 2, 1871, has the following:

“We cut from the marriage notices of the Philadelphia Press the following illustration, omitting names, of the way in which attempts to reduce human marriages to the level of those of the lower animals are dressed up in fine language:

“ ‘In Philadelphia, February 23, S—— and S——, the parties protesting against all marriage laws, whether legal or conventional, which subject either the wife or the husband to any control or influence on the part of the other which is not in accordance with the dictates of pure and mutual love.’

“This is, of course, simple ‘pairing.’Marriage means the assumption by a moral agent of an obligation to perform certain duties, even after they become disagreeable. The arrangement by which the parties live together as long as they find it thoroughly pleasant is that common among birds, beasts, and fishes, and has nothing human about it.”

The Independent, a Protestant religious paper, sneers at all barriers to divorce, Catholic, Protestant, or civil, as “shallow,” and declares that “no matter with what solemn ceremony the twain may have been made one, yet when love departs, then marriage ceases and divorce begins.”

A certain unhappy section of those waifs of womanhood, the advocates of woman's rights, is known as the champion of “free-love,” that is, in plain words, adultery. Mrs. Stanton, one of the leaders, has said somewhere that “marriage is but a partnership contract terminable at the will of the parties,” and has advocated marriages for three years.

To this last proposition we have only one objection. Why three years? If a marriage is based on mere passion, three months or six at the furthest would be enough to exhaust the cohesive element, for if the adage be true that “no man is a hero to his valet,” it is equally certain that no man and woman could by any human possibility live together for that time in the familiar intercourse implied by marriage, without discovering to each other certain asperities of temper, inequalities of disposition, in short, all the little meannesses of our poor human nature. This disenchantment, following the [pg 782] close and daily companionship that is almost inevitable in married life, is enough to kill passion, though it cannot even daunt principle. Again, in a marriage based on passion, the satiety that follows in the train of unlawful love would be reproduced, and would break up the connection in far less than three years. In fact, when we come to sift the question, we find that, putting aside the religious spirit presiding over marriage, that state of life has no appreciable sign to distinguish it from the score of illicit connections punished by law or branded by society. We find here almost a parallel to the question lately agitated in England among Episcopalians, as to the reason why the Church of England should be called a “church,” and not, like all other independent Protestant bodies, a “sect.” We ask, What is to distinguish such a “marriage” as our modern reformers advocate from the “liaisons” at which society pretends to be so virtuously shocked? Where is the intrinsic difference between a woman who sells her honor to many men at once and one who surrenders it to a single man at a time for just that period during which pleasure shall keep her constant to him?

Another form of attack upon the sanctity of marriage is the trade of the great journals in daily advertisements such as these, which meet our eyes every morning:

“Absolute divorces legally obtained in different states. Desertion, etc., sufficient cause. No publicity. No charge until divorce is obtained. Advice free.

——, Attorney, —— Broadway.”

Or, with slight variations, thus:

“Also Commissioner for every State.

——, Counsellor-at-Law,

—— Broadway.”

Here we see the press and the law conspiring to lend aid—and, more than that, encouragement—to the loosest and most devastating of passions. Then, again, the tone of the newspapers with regard to moral irregularities is a painful sign of the times. Thus we read in a great “daily”:

“Out West they call divorces ‘escapes.’A speedy and safe ‘escape’ is guaranteed for a very low figure, and, as usual, a great many parties figure for it.”

There is a levity about such remarks that is saddening, when taken in connection with the future of a great people.

The morbid curiosity of the public is thus excited under the convenient plea of satisfying it, while, with regard to the institution of marriage itself, the saying is exemplified, “Give a dog a bad name, and then shoot him.” Marriage is ridiculed, conjugal affection put down as antiquated, home-lovingness pitied as old-fashioned, family reunions voted dull, and, as a natural consequence, youth is more or less alienated from the unfashionable circle. It is easy, then, to turn on marriage as a principle, remove the stumbling-block altogether, paint in seductive colors a substitute for home, and familiarize the public with so-called legal but transient unions. Once this principle is established in the abstract, it will be merely a question of time as to its practical extension. Granted that a man or woman may change companions as often as they choose, who is to regulate how often? Like the husband of Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights, every day? Why not? Again, if one man may have many “wives,” why should not a woman have many “husbands”? And so on ad infinitum the license might spread unchecked, till there would be as many conflicting interpretations of marriage as there are already of the Bible. Absolute communism [pg 783] would be quite a logical sequence, and, in a society so utterly confused as to parentage, there could be little question as to inheritance!

Christian marriage, on the contrary, has both a social and a sanitary, as well as a religious aspect. It creates a strong and healthy race, and at the very outset of each man's career gives him a position by investing him with a responsibility. He feels that the pride which his old father and mother have in him must not be shamed; that the honor of his family is bound up in his actions; and that his behavior may influence for good or for evil both the moral and temporal prospects of his near kindred. A man so weighted feels a just pride, which, in default of higher motives, may even yet guide him into greatness; and though such a man may yield to temptation, fall into vice, and disgrace himself, so much at least of his early training will survive as to make him feel keenly the shame of his position. This alone has saved hundreds. It has been the serpent in the wilderness to many, but it would no longer be an imaginable motive were the ideal of Christian marriage, with its attendant responsibilities, to be swept away. There is another aspect under which the frequency of divorce and the condoned irregularities of intercourse between the sexes are a constant threat to public security—we mean in provoking murder. Three parts of the fearful murders committed in New York, and also in many other parts of the Union, are traceable more or less to ill-assorted marriages and a spirit of unchristian rebellion against lawful restraints. Lately there has been a glaring case in point, the details of which are fresh in the memory of every one. A man is deliberately shot dead on the very threshold of what is practically a “Divorce Court”; the murderer is a brutal husband incensed at the victim's testimony against himself. In 1872, three of the most famous New York “characters” figured in a terrible drama ending in death, imprisonment, and disgrace. What was the reason that set two of the most unscrupulous speculators in the world at deadly enmity? The disputed favor of a woman who, according to the new code, only asserts her rights, and claims to change “husbands” as often as she pleases. God help the age and nation in which such things are daily done, and where animal passion laughs in the teeth of law! Who does not see how every right and security hangs by the sanctity of marriage? Marriage, in the proper sense of the word, implies exclusive and permanent possession, and represents the first and greatest right of property. If that property is to be made movable, salable, takable, in a word, why not other less sacred and less valuable property also? “Property is theft,” say the socialists, and certainly it is, if we can previously agree to consider marriage so. If all kinds of possessions (life itself included) are to be thus transferable, every individual will be reduced to protect them single-handed against the world, and from this state of things will grow a monster system of organized murder and legalized rapine. The early Californian society would be nothing to this imaginary community.

In France, Italy, and Spain, the infamous laws not only encouraging but actually enforcing civil marriage are sapping the foundations of society; and in England, a country hitherto held as a model for its conjugal and homely tendencies, the tenets of “free-love” are making giant inroads into social life, and leavening the mass of everyday literature. [pg 784] Bigamy and divorce are almost worn-out sensations; they have supplied the ablest pens with thrilling subjects, and have furnished the best theatres with the only dramas that really “take.” Something new and more monstrous yet is needed, and the prurient imagination that shall first succeed in originating a new version of social sin will become the power of the moment.

Such is the present situation. We do not know if there ever has been a worse stage of immorality, except, perhaps, that before the Flood; for at all times of unparalleled license there have been some extenuating circumstances, of which we are afraid we must own ourselves bereft. In the beginning of the Christian era, license was confined to pagans; for in the tottering Roman Empire the Christians were all soldiers of the cross, and their watch for the Bridegroom was too eager to allow them time for temptation; in the transition state that followed, the church's power already made itself felt, and though barbarian kings still defied their pastors, the latter had at hand ecclesiastical terrors that seldom failed in the end to subdue the half-converted Goth or Lombard. In the days of the ill-starred Renaissance, when a spirit of neo-classicism threatened once more to deify sin under the garb of art, the Council of Trent sat in solemn judgment, and condemned abuses which had unhappily paved an easy way for heresy: while later on, even in the days of the wicked and brilliant court of Versailles, there was found a Bourdaloue to rebuke the public sinners who sat in the high places, and to eulogize Christian marriage in the midst of a gathering which seemed to have utterly forgotten its meaning.

Faith still lingered—the faith that made the middle ages what they were—that faith that condemned public sin to as public a penance, and out of great excesses drew great examples. Louise de la Vallière was almost the last representative of this mediæval spirit of generous atonement; and her heroic words, when told in her cloister of the death of her son, “I should weep rather for his birth than for his death,” were the genuine outcome of a faith that could restore a prostitute to innocence, and place upon a once guilty brow almost a virgin's crown.

With Voltaire, the work that Luther had begun was perfected, and henceforth it was not Europe that believed, but only a few scattered exiles who here and there kept the lamp of the faith dimly alight in the stifling atmosphere of universal and fashionable doubt. Even among believers the spirit of ready sympathy, with the slightest indication of the church's unspoken meaning was gone, and there remained only the too self-conscious effort of unquestioning loyalty. Still, thank God! it did and does remain, and, though shorn of all poetry, it is none the less vigorous in self-defence. But we may now say that indeed the flood has broken loose, the Philistines are upon us, the whole array of the world's newest forces is brought to bear against us, and behind her dismantled outposts the church retreats to her citadel, the naked Rock of Peter. Men say that the Council of the Vatican was inopportune, presumptuous, and imprudent; let the world's gracefully lapsing course be a living refutation to such words. Every outward stay is gone; every difficulty in the way of the reunion of pastors is trebled; every see is hedged about with physical bars that are insurmountable; nothing remains free but what cannot be fettered—the tongue. Who can wonder if the church, in this dire emergency, delegates to one [pg 785] man the power she can no longer collectively exercise in peace? As in old Flemish cities there sits up in the lonely belfry of the cathedral a watcher whose duty it is to guard the city against fire, and to warn the people through a brazen trumpet at which spot he descries the first appearance of danger, so in the heart of the City of God there sits now the watchman whose eye and voice are bound to raise the alarm and direct the remedies through the length and breadth of listening Christendom.

The Council of the Vatican has made the word of the Pope the brazen tocsin of the Christian world.

And now, having said so much of the possibilities opened up by the present lax spirit in morals and equally lax interpretation of what remains in the shape of legal restraints upon vice, let us speak of what Christian marriage ought to be. We will be brief, for the position almost defines itself. Of the indissolubility of marriage under all circumstances, even in the case of one of the parties breaking the marriage vow, we will not speak, nor even of the fidelity which marriage requires in every thought and slightest intention. But we would insist upon that which ensures a happy and holy union, namely, the preliminary motive. We have seen how bad marriages and an unworthy idea of this state of life lead to shame, to socialism, to violence, sometimes to a criminal ending in a common jail; let us see now what leads to bad marriages themselves. Two motives there are—one mercenary, and one sensual. We heard a very impressive Jesuit preacher say a few years ago, in the pulpit of one of the most beautiful and frequented churches in London, that to make a good marriage both prayer and seemly preparation are necessary. Some parents, he said, in their pious anxiety to leave all things to Providence, and to avoid that solicitude for worldly things which the Gospel condemns, neglect to avail themselves for their children of the allowable means and legitimate opportunities of social life; but to these he would say, Remember the words of Christ: “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”238 On the other hand, many parents sinned far more grievously and—he was loth to say it—more frequently by altogether leaving the Creator out of the question in the serious matter of their children's settlement in life. Which of these two extremes is the prominent one in this country? We need not answer the question. We know too well how nine-tenths of those marriages are made which within a few months or years are broken in the divorce courts, or otherwise dissolved by a shameful esclandre. We know how wealth especially, position, associations, beauty, and accomplishments all rank before moral worth in what is called lightly but too truly the “marriage-market.” We know how marriage is looked forward to through girlhood, not as the assumption of a sacred responsibility, but as the preliminary step to emancipation; we know how it is heartlessly canvassed by men as an expensive but advantageous luxury, its cost being in proportion to the social figure it will enable them to make, but its essence of no deeper moral account to them than the purchase of one trotter or the undertaking of one speculation more or less. We do not say that there are no exceptions to this rule—far from it; but that is just the point: however honorable these cases are, the fact still remains that they are exceptions. Again, where the motive [pg 786] is not directly mercenary, it is often selfish; old men will marry for mere comfort, physical luxury, and the regularity of a well-appointed home—things which the presence of a handsome, thoughtful, and tolerably intellectual woman alone can ensure; women no longer young, but still hungering for the whirl of fashion, will marry unsuitably for the sake of an assured position and means to continue the frivolous course of their former lives; in fact, all shallow disguises of selfishness have their representatives in the “marriage-market,” from that of the millionaire who wants a wife to sit at the head of his table and wear his diamonds, to that of the day-laborer who wants one to cook his dinner, mend his clothes, and eke out his week's earnings by her own hard work. Marriages made in this spirit are unblest and always end badly: the millionaire will divorce his wife, and the laborer murder his in a fit of intoxication; the end is the same, the means differ only according as natural temperament and habits of education diverge.

How far otherwise with marriage in the true Scriptural, Christian sense of the word! In poverty or in riches, alike sacred and full of dignity; always conscious of its sacramental crown; ever mindful of its holy ministry, the salvation of two souls, the ladder to heaven of two lives that without it might have made shipwreck of their eternal interests! A thing apart from the common unions of earth, different from a commercial partnership, stronger than a political coalition, holier than even a spontaneous friendship. A thing which, like the riddle of Samson, is “sweetness out of strength,” and whose grace is so sublime that in heaven it can only find one transformation worthy of itself. “You err, not knowing the power of God; for in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be married; but shall be as the angels of God in heaven.”239 We are not told that the tie will be like brotherhood or like friendship; we are left to infer that between husband and wife some more peculiar link will exist hereafter than will be common to us all as children of the same Father, and it is plainly foretold that this relation will be as that of the angels towards each other.

We have only to look into the gospels and the teachings of the Apostle of the Gentiles to see by what means we may in the married state so sanctify our lives as to deserve this heavenly transformation; we have only to read the marriage-service to learn the plain, straightforward, but most solemn duties, the performance of which will secure us spiritual peace and joy in this life or the next. To use the sacrament worthily, we must come to it with worthy preparation and steadfast intention, first as Christians resolved never to perjure themselves before God, then as rational beings willing to abide by whatever unforeseen consequences their deliberate vow may entail in the future. For it is an idle pretext to allege that, if one party breaks the engagement, the other is de facto absolved from it. Where in the formula, Catholic or Protestant, is this proviso? The only qualifying sentence is this, “Until death do us part.” How, then, can any reasonable person interpret “death” to mean sin, incompatibility, or any other incidental unpleasantness? We think that those who are so ready to foist unwarrantable meanings on the plain and naked oath they have sworn in full possession of their senses at the altar, would hardly be the persons we should like to trust as men or women of unimpeachable [pg 787] honor in the ordinary transactions of life.

If mercenary motives are uppermost in the majority of marriages in this age and in this nation, sensuality is none the less responsible for a share of the misery attendant upon modern unions. We have already spoken of the evil of marriages founded on passion, and of the shameful way in which the colloquial adage, “Marry in haste, and repent at leisure,” is thus frequently illustrated. To this also the remedy lies in a serious Christian spirit of preparation for marriage. The root of all evil developments in the relations between the sexes lies in the early education of the contracting parties, and it is here that the only radical cure can be tried. The church bids her children be especially circumspect at the juncture of marriage, but she also teaches them to reverence the sacrament from childhood upward as a type of the union between herself and her divine Spouse. If, as children, marriage appears to us in the shape of the angel of home, watching over the existence it has created, and dignifying the parental authority it has built up; if in youth the goal of marriage is looked forward to as the toga virilis of life, the reward of a dutiful childhood, the ennobling badge of our enrolment among the soldiers of the cross, then and only then will our country find in us efficient citizens, earnest patriots, and reliable defenders. If among men there is revived the chivalrous spirit of deference and forbearance towards women which sealed the middle ages as a charmed cycle among all divisions of time, and among women there is cultivated that generous and true womanliness which made SS. Monica and Paula, and Blanche of Castille, the typical heroines of the wedded state, then may we expect to see “a new heaven and a new earth.” Marriage means reverence for each other on the part of the persons married, as representing in themselves the sacrament typical of Christ's union with the church; it means reverence for the children who are entrusted to their care by God and their country, and whom they are bound by the solemn adjuration of Christ not to scandalize; it means reverence for themselves, as the tabernacles of a special grace and the progenitors of new worshippers at God's feet, new subjects of the kingdom of heaven. It is the woman especially who is bound to feel and express this reverence, for woman is, as the French poetically say, the priestess of the ideal. Besides, the highest perfection ever reached in the married state was reached by a woman, the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. Among married saints there have always been more women canonized than men. The women of a nation form the men; and, if marriage is to be reformed, it must be done first through the women. We hope and pray that it may soon be so, but we fear that outside the church, where the reform is, in the abstract, not needed, there is not sufficient impetus to ensure its being made. We say in the abstract, because practically there are many marriages made among Catholics, celebrated in Catholic churches, and decorously observed through the course of a blameless life, which yet call loudly for reform, and sadly lack the noble Christian spirit that made perfect the unions of Delphina and Eleazar, and of S. Louis of France and Margaret of Provence. But however deficient in some cases our practice may unhappily be, our doctrine remains ever unchanged, and our laws ever inflexible. Thanks to the church, marriage is still recognized as an act not purely animal nor yet purely civil; and, thanks to the infallibility of the church [pg 788] and her calm expectancy of eternal duration, it will remain to the end of time an honored institution. If threatened, it will still live; if derided, it will nevertheless conquer. Christian marriage is the mould in which God has chosen to throw the lava of natural passion, and without whose wholesome restraints we should have a shapeless torrent of licentiousness, scathing mankind with its poisonous breath, carrying away all landmarks of ancestry, property, and personal safety, and finally exterminating the human race long before the appointed time for the dread judgment in the Valley of Josaphat.