Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

G >> George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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I have great hopes in young woman. The destinies of the generations to
come are not a little in her hands. In the stirring times that are
before us she must act a noble part. Her pen, her voice, her power will
move upon the world. Every young woman will do something in this
movement. Let her determine to do her part well; to be a true woman; to
lead a true life; to exert a true influence on mankind in the fear of
God and the love of man.

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.

Lecture Twelve.

RELIGIOUS DUTIES.

Our Father In Heaven--Moral Obligations and Religious
Duties--Impiety of Professed Christians--Deficiency of Religious
Gratitude--Gratitude makes Life Cheerful--Religion gives Joy to
Life--Love, the Seed of Religion--The Religion of Christ--Woman's
Heart a Natural Shrine--Religion fit for all Conditions--Love for
the Unseen--Personal Acquaintance not necessary for Love--The Idea
of God Spontaneous--It is the Unseen we Love--Life well lived is
Glorious.

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