UNION IN MARRIAGES.

 

CONDITION of minds united by affinities is what we mean by marriage. Marriage is an abused custom. It is a ceremony connected with weal or woe to the parties. It is an abused custom when minds wed without the wedding ring of circles harmoniousIy interested in each other's society and welfare. It is a custom dangerous to the welfare of mind. It is dangerous when it binds discordant minds together, to fight and wrangle with each other. It is dangerous when such minds being opposed to each other, are not united in harmony, but by the custom which wars against all enjoyment. It is dangerous because the parties, not having wisdom to see the inharmonies of their minds, become legally united when they are naturally disunited. It is dangerous because most marriages are consummated in violation of the conditions necessary to permanent felicity. Marriage is honorable. Marriage is dishonorable. It is honorable when affinities wed minds, or minds are united by affinities which never oppose each other. It is dishonorable when parties wed upon any other principle. We see more unfortunate results from legalized marriages, than we shall disclose. We see results which might have been obviated, which never could have occurred, if the wisdom of nature had been consulted and obeyed.

 

When persons are legalized together, bound as slaves are bound by law; when the assistance of mutual feelings is disregarded in the new relation, and covenants are made without attachments only as custom and selfishness ordain, it will never contribute to the enjoyment of such persons. They are not married in a consistent sense. They are without the union which constitutes real marriage in the sight of God; and the connection formed upon such conditions, is no better than other connections, which bear a more wretched name. The conditions are precisely similar, with the exception that one has the approbation of custom and law, while the other has not. We say, it has the approbation of law; but what law? A law of wrong, a law of human folly, not a law of God. It has no sanction in nature, but its binding force is repudiated by the wisdom of eternity. Covenants established upon the eternal harmony of minds united can never be dissolved. They will control the minds thus distinguished, when dust shall mingle with dust, and tears shall flow no more. The minds which are wedded, because united, can never be disunited; even the work of wisdom, which calls one and not the other to this sphere, does not separate those whom God has joined together. The circle of wisdom which unites the two, death has no power to disunite. They are one in the affinity of their minds. This affinity is a law of God in nature. This law of God in nature, nature has no power to violate or disturb. Hence, the sorrowing spirit, in the loneliness of bereavement, is visited, is not separated from the one to whom it was united for eternity. It cannot be alone. Whatever grief or sorrow may be imposed by ignorance, no mind united to another mind by the covenant of mutual resemblance—the natural affinities of corresponding conditions—can ever be destroyed, because nature has not the power to deny itself, and revoke what it has established by its own laws. The eternity of the law which unites, can never disunite. As, therefore, the law of God is eternal, so the union which the law communicates, can never be disturbed while that law remains. What the law does is done by virtue of the law, and what is done by virtue of the law, the law can never repudiate, as repudiation would be a denial of his work and its wisdom.

 

This wisdom of God in nature, is lamentably overlooked in the arrangements, which control matrimonial alliances. The minds of two discordant spirits must inevitably invite misery, when legalized together. They are unlike. They disagree. They wrong each other. They differ. They wrangle about the difference. We see who is to blame. Minds make minds wretched. The difference is the cause of all the wretchedness. Here lies the foe, the enemy who is to blame, and to blame for the trouble produced. Who will not see what will obviate this evil? Who will not rejoice when it is removed? Have we the power to remove it? If we have not, do others possess the power? If they possess the power, why do they not exercise it? Why do they not prevent the unholy alliances which weave their wretchedness in the relation of husband and wife? Husband and wife! Bitter mockery of both! There is no husband and no wife in such covenants. They are null and void of all the essentials of wisdom and happiness. They are mere covenants which brutes might make— brutes such as minds in worse than brutal ignorance only do make. They are covenants which answer laws of men, but which violate all the laws which control the peace and enjoyment of minds in the body. They are covenants which selfish gratification of brutal appetite makes, and makes to wrong those who make them.

 

There is no condition in which the human mind can be placed more unenviable, than the wedded life of discordant spirits. They are legally in form joined together, but what is joined without attractive forces, will separate by repulsive influences, unless restrained by the wisdom of public disapprobation and shame. This voice may keep the form in respect, and continue the wretchedness it would ameliorate. It would allay the elements of social discord by strengthening the obligations to regard the unholy alliance by contributing the bonds which make the subject more and more wretched, by saving minds from public disapprobation, to make them wrangle and disgrace themselves and others. We see whole families and neighborhoods agitated with the evils of misguided minds, who have been formally recognized as husband and wife, but who never, for one moment, enjoyed the satisfaction of so sweet a union, so holy and happy life as Teal affinities produce. There are very few real marriages among men and women. There are very few who are husbands and wives, that have assumed to be such in the sight of men. There are very few who live in harmony as harmony is attainable, when minds unite by works of love and pure affection. Their sympathies are estranged, their social feelings are unlike, their wants vary, their circles of mind differ, their wisdom contradicts, their temper and habits are discordant, and their wretchedness must be necessarily mutual.

 

Minds disturbed by either of the above mentioned causes are not joined together in the sight of heaven. The parties are enemies to the extent of the difference between them. They can not be friends when disturbance occasions misery. They can not be united when the conflict answers conflict. They will not work together as husband and wife should and will do, when united in a circle of fidelity and: wisdom. They are more wretched in works than in unmarried life—a life which God disapproves, which can never make the mind blessed as the union of congenial souls is able to do, which insults the law of God in creation by refusing obedience to its requirements, and contradicts the wisdom of Him who made male and female for the purpose of working out the counsels of his own will—the welfare of children whom he loves. Marriage is dishonored. It is dishonored by married and unmarried. The vow is broken. The law is violated. The covenant is disregarded. The union is not union. The union in form and appearance is disunion and wrong. Have we no remedy? Shall the wrong be continued? Who will rectify it? Who will change the conditions, and establish rules which will remove the evil from earth! Have many who differ about their differences ever contemplated the wisdom of circles where no discord rules, where no wrangles are known, where no inharmonies prevail? Have they ever contrasted their condition with the union which is enjoyed by spirits of this circle of the second sphere? If not, we would say, compare, and receive instruction. The wrangling alliances of many minds on earth are spectacles of wrong which need a remedy. They need a reform. But to reform the wrong we must reform the customs which produce it. We must change the rules which perpetuate the evil. We must change the laws which continue a custom of wrong in society. Indeed, what is custom but law? What is popular opinion but law? What are the forms of marriage but law? What are the conditions by which parties are legalized together but law? Do all these laws guarantee impartial justice to male and female? Have women contemplated the invasion which custom bar, made upon their rights? Are they slaves that they must bow to it? Bow to a custom which denies them the rights exercised by men in forming an acquaintance, and selecting their companions for life? We see a monstrous injustice controlling the legalized forms of matrimony. We see young ladies consenting to an arrangement of marriage, because custom has said a woman's rights are not as man's because wrong has established rules of propriety, and made them slaves to the wrong which forbids the freedom enjoyed by the male, and because she would not violate the rule of propriety, however wrong and oppressive, however unjust and cruel, to wed a man whose affinities would never be disturbed by differences, which, under other circumstances, would be almost sure not to follow. To overcome the evil of a wrong custom, requires what those who have encouraged and sustained it do not possess—a work of authority, which, when understood, will be respected and obeyed, thereby reforming the abuses which endanger the social enjoyments of human life. Not till a reform takes place in the custom by which marriage contracts are controlled, will minds unite in the order of nature. Not till the rights of one party shall be regarded as the rights of the other, will marriage be a union of minds, and the wrongs of society be corrected. Not till wisdom controls the contracting parties so as to make contracts with regard to the conditions of mutual attachments, will men be husbands, or women wives. They may wed whom they will, but the wedding can not make dissimilar conditions similar. It can not harmonize what is inharmonious. It can not produce what should be produced. It can not make wrong right, nor will it make right wrong. What is truly disunited can not be united by any form of marriage, and when forms of marriage are untrue to the real condition of the parties, they are hypocritical, deceptive, base, vile, and unworthy of righteous submission or support. They are professions of what is not a reality. Under such circumstances, many evils are continued from generation to generation. The inharmony of two minds, professionally and legally united, is fruitful of more mischief and wrong than most minds will at first perceive. The most selfish work is not more wretched. Can any thing be more wretched than the wrangles which must ensue between parties, wedded only in the form of legal marriage? And how is this evil to be rectified? The custom which prevails between parties, extending to one rights which are denied to the other, serves only to continue the wrong. The wrong can not be overcome without a change in the custom, and the custom can not be changed without a change in the minds of those who foster it. Their minds can not be changed without attacking the ignorance on which it rests, and exposing the folly of its continuance; and in turn this will meet with opposition, as all reforms have done.

 

We have seen disputes and quarrels about differences, but we have never seen harmony promoted by contention, nor good come from the wrangles of social discord. The works of mind at variance will not yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness, nor will contention produce order and sympathy. Is it not wiser, then, that minds who would wed by law should wed by affinity than wed with differences? And if it be wiser, that affinities should be consulted, ought not equal freedom to be tolerated in the custom upon which such contracts are matured? Ought not the custom to be abolished which makes it disgraceful for a lady to exercise the rights of courtship enjoyed by the other sex? Ought any one to exercise control denied to another, in matters where both are equally interested? We see the evils which grow out of the prevailing custom. We see no remedy without an abandonment of that custom, because minds can not form the alliances most agreeable to their affinities, without contradicting the law which custom has established. We would not recommend an indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes, neither would we approve of marriage contrary to the natural affinities, which are indispensably requisite to domestic tranquillity. We will not recommend a change of custom, which protects the rights and privileges enjoyed in common by all. It is the inequality of minds, and the abridged rights of females that deserve attention. When minds prefer to wed, these mutual interests should be understood. It is folly on the part of the man to exact what will be a source of disturbance and vexation to him. Far better that his wishes to wed one whose affinities were dissimilar, should meet with a thousand disappointments, than to unite with one in legal marriage, because custom has deprived her of a companion agreeing with her affections. Far better that she should be allowed to consult her own like sand dislikes, unbiased by constraint of arbitrary rules, than wed one unlike herself. Such wedding would impair their bliss, if not make them both wretched for life in the body.

 

We will write what we will. We will not write all we see. But we will write that marriage is abused, the law of God is violated, and the peace of parties united in legal covenants, wasted by the false and unwholesome customs and practices, which govern the matrimonial connection. We say what is true, that until these customs and practices become changed, so that equal rights shall not be interrupted by false delicacy, or the fear of offended rules of propriety, the relation of husband and wife will be enjoyed by only a small number of those who may assume that character. They can not often wed without violating custom, as they should wed. They can not seek their likes and avoid their dislikes, because custom has fixed a limit to propriety in making marriage contracts—the most important of all contracts—while it admits of perfect freedom of opinion on all other questions of policy and property. Strange as it may seem, the most important of all contracts must be hampered and fettered with rules, which would be deemed an outrage to reason to propose, in regard to other matters of interest. We will say, when the importance of consulting mutual affinities shall be appreciated, the customs which control unhappy marriages will be disregarded, and minds will be more likely to live and enjoy each other's society in such relation, than what they now do. They will live and act more in union, more in peace, more in love, and the reward of wisdom wilt not be withheld from them.