PART IX.
AN ALL-IMPORTANT SUBJECT.
“To everything there is a season.”—“A time to love.”—Eccles. iii. 1, 8.
f I were, this evening, to ask each of you, my dear girl friends, what subject occupies your thoughts most in regard to your future life, I wonder how many of you would even whisper the truth in my ear—if, indeed, you cared to trust me so far. You have trusted me in many things, and your confidences have been very precious to me; but they have caused me sorrow as well as joy: sorrow, since no human being can do more than lay bare the workings of one heart, the spiritual experience of one soul, the sensations, painful or otherwise, of one body, in order to help or advise others. We may all make guesses about our neighbours, but we can be sure of nothing outside ourselves.
Our object to-night is of almost universal interest amongst those who are girls to-day, but who will be the women, wives and mothers of future years. I know that there has been a great revolution in girl life and habits during the last few years. Girls have taken up new occupations, and are the rivals of, and competitors with, the other sex, in nearly every field of study and of work. Many girls live independent of home ties, and some, I hope not a very large number, scout the mention of that sweetest bond of all, which has subsisted ever since God created the first human pair.
Do not for a moment imagine that I, a woman who has lived long enough to note from its very beginning the wonderful educational improvement made by my sex, think lightly of it, or undervalue it. Far from this, I am proud of what girls are doing to-day, and every feminine triumph chronicled gives me a throb of pleasure and a sense of sympathy with the patient, self-denying worker, who has not only deserved success, but won it. I do not, however, sympathise with the minority amongst these intellectually gifted girls and women, who ignore home ties, because they work outside the home circle, and speak of the sacred names of wife and mother as if the duties pertaining to those who hear them were not to be contemplated from the heights to which they have attained. What I feel about feminine progress is this: Every bit of knowledge gained, every step made in manual dexterity, artistic perfection, or even professional skill, should trend towards the development of a nobler being, better equipped for every womanly duty than were the women of preceding generations. Ay, and more ready and willing to do it with all the added charm that refinement and culture can give to what nature bestowed in the first instance.
Since girls and women outnumber men, there will doubtless be a pretty strong contingent, amongst the most scholarly girls, who will not marry.
Experience has already proved this to some extent. But, after all, human nature is stronger than reason, and will assert itself in unexpected ways, to the confusion of every learned argument.
Feminine independence is apt to lose its value, and the right to stand, in every sense, on the same level and platform with the man is soon waived, when the true love of a true heart is offered together with the strong arm to learn on and to give protection in time of need.
Tell me, dear ones, what piece of news, in which you are not personally concerned, stirs you most, and excites the greatest interest? Is it not the tidings of a friend’s engagement?
What confidences are so sacred as those that tell of happy, hopeful love? Think of your girl friend who, with sweet shyness, hid her blushing face on your shoulder, and repeated in a whisper the words lately spoken by that one who had of late become more to her than all the world besides. Did not your own heart thrill with sympathetic gladness as you listened? Were you not proud of her confidence, and did you not feel more honoured by it than by any trust she had reposed in you before?
She had told you of her joys and sorrows, her hopes and fears on other subjects, many a time, and you had listened and sympathised. But all the rest sank into insignificance when compared with the importance of the future now opening before her. Her confidence was mingled with both smiles and tears—happy tears you were sure—and you too were ready to laugh and cry by turns, as you clasped her in your arms, and kissed her, telling her between whiles how truly you rejoiced in her joy.
I can picture you going homeward with the news, so delighted to tell it that your walk breaks into a run in your eagerness, and yet as you go, you perhaps think to yourself, “I wonder if such happiness will come to me also. Shall I some day reciprocate such confidence as my friend has placed in me?”
As you asked yourself the question, did some known face come before your mind’s eye and bring to your cheek a self-conscious flush? Not a flush of shame. Far be it from me to suggest such a thing. You have no need to shrink from owning that you do look forward hopefully to the possibility of being one day the loved and trusted partner of some good man, and, if God so wills it, the mother of his children.
The prospect of being a wife and a mother involves alike the most sacred, vast, and yet delightful responsibilities. How can you be fit to undertake such, if you have given them no serious thought beforehand, or striven to qualify yourself for them?
Having myself known such an ideally happy married life that the very memory of it makes me unspeakably rich now, in the days of my widowhood, how I long to see my experiences repeated in the lives of those who are to be the wives and mothers of the future!
Death robbed me of my partner several years ago, but even death could not take away the riches that memory stored for me during more than thrice that time, nearly thirty blessed years. Having had experience of the things which tend to the building up of such memories, I feel free to speak of them to you, my dear girl friends, to whom the path is yet an untrodden way.
Oh, I do want it to be a happy path to all of you who may enter upon it! Not necessarily all smooth. Such paths are seldom found on earth, and when they are, those who tread them are apt to grow weary even of happy monotony, and to step aside into others, where they find or make difficulties for themselves. Or they remain on the smooth road, but cover it with imaginary stumbling-blocks, which are harder to surmount than real ones.
What I desire for each of you is a road on which you and the dear one who is the accepted alike of your heart, your reason, and your conscience may walk together as “two who are agreed.”
The privilege of choice pertains to the other sex; but only after a limited fashion, seeing that with yourselves rests the power to accept or refuse any number of offers that may be made to you.
If you accept, your answer should have a threefold basis. Honest affection to begin with, for, believe me, without this married life cannot be truly happy. It is a life which calls for much self-devotion, self-denial, patience, and the bending of one’s own will to that of another.
True affection sweetens all these things and makes them easy, and that must be a hard nature indeed which does not respond on receiving such proofs of it.
But reason and conscience should each have a voice in saying “Yes” or “No” to an offer of marriage. They will speak, even when at times the girl is unwilling to listen to either of them.
Conscience will ask, “Is the union with this man one on which a blessing can be asked and expected? I have been brought up by God-fearing parents, whose great desire has been that I should be His child and walk as a disciple of Jesus. On this, the most important subject of all, shall we two be agreed?”
I am not going to suggest all the questions which will be likely to come into the mind of a Christian girl under such circumstances; but I cannot imagine one worthy of the name who would give an answer, affecting the happiness of at least two lives, without earnestly seeking guidance from God by prayer and supplication. If, after this, conscience is satisfied, only reason’s voice has to be heard.
“What, are not affection and conscience enough without help from reason?” you ask.
Well, perhaps I should say common sense should have a third voice in the matter. You and I have eyes to see and ears to hear. However young you may be, you have seen and known something of what are called imprudent marriages.
There may have been true affection and unity in aims, principles, and work. The union, as such, may be one against which no one can say a word, except that it will not be a prudent marriage, and can only bring regrettable consequences.
How a young man is to be honoured if he, for the very love he bears a girl, refrains from giving her the pain of saying “No” when her heart as well as esteem for his character would induce her to say “Yes” at all risks!
Often the girl has to show herself the stronger under such circumstances, and then her task is doubly hard, for she has to battle against her own heart’s pleadings as well as those of her lover.
I do not believe that any girl who shows her courage and self-devotion in such a manner will have cause to regret in the long run. If the man is worthy of her affection, he will love her the better for the motives which have induced her to refuse him. He will have realised the cost to herself, and will determine that it shall not be in vain. Knowing that he cannot give her such a home as would deserve the name, and that marriage on such a slender or uncertain income would mean privation, constant struggling to make ends meet, probably debt as an additional burden, he will resolve to work the harder and possess his soul in patience until brighter days dawn for both of them.
He will say, “What is worth having is worth both working and waiting for,” and he will redouble his efforts to shorten the time of probation. Each will be cheered by the thought, “It was for her sake I kept silent,” or “It was for his sake I said ‘No,’ not my own.”
I have often been consulted by girls who, having seen my own happy married life, have decided that I must be an authority on things pertaining thereto. But, alas, it has also often happened that the applicant for advice only wished me to confirm her own foolish decision.
One case recurs to my mind after the lapse of many years. The fiancée, orphaned as an infant, had been brought up, educated, and cared for by relatives. She was a good pianist, and had early found a groove in which to earn a livelihood, always having in addition the certainty of a home with those who had brought her up, should she need it.
Past her first girlhood, at twenty-nine she engaged herself to a young man eight years her junior, inferior to herself in social position, education, speech, and manner, and with a weekly income of twenty-five shillings, no other money, and relatives who rather needed help than were likely to give it.
She came to ask if I would smooth matters with the relatives, who were grieved and indignant at her folly in thinking of such a union. A little questioning elicited the facts that her savings were to furnish the cottage, pay the wedding expenses, including the bridegroom’s new suit, and that rent alone would absorb six out of the weekly twenty-five shillings. She could not retain her position after marriage, but she hoped to earn something by giving music lessons.
Need I tell you what eloquence I wasted on this wilful young woman, who was old enough to know better, but too old and obstinate to be convinced against her will. I brought figures to bear, put the cost of the barest necessaries opposite to that nineteen shillings of weekly income after payment of rent. But it was all useless. She did not want to be convicted of rashness and folly, but to induce others to agree to them.
You have doubtless foreseen the result whilst listening to the prelude. The marriage took place. The wife’s money was all absorbed at the start, and debts began to be incurred almost immediately. The man was not of the sort likely to win a better position, and the woman, gently nurtured, found in him a hard, selfish domestic tyrant, who made her life of toil doubly bitter by his coarseness and the harshness of his conduct towards the children. Friends had said they would not help; but pity and the old affection for the woman whose childhood they had watched over conquered indignation, and much was done for her, often by stealth, or she and her little ones would have been no better for it. I will not tell the rest of a sad story; but what I have said gives a picture of results where neither conscience nor reason had a voice in deciding the future of two lives.
Every rank of life furnishes samples of ill-advised marriages. A girl may be attracted by a handsome person, and not pause to find out whether the moral and religious character of the man corresponds with it. She may note his pleasant social qualities and admire them; but it would be well for her to find out whether these are equally notable under the home roof. It is good to know what sort of a son and brother a man is.
If a mother’s face lights with pleasure at the mention of her son, and the thought of what he is to her brings moisture to her eyes, if the girls of the family make a friend of him and regard him as a great factor in the sum that makes up the happiness of home, there will be good reason for believing that, in the dearest of all relationships, he will not be found wanting.
There is an old saying that “A man is known by the company he keeps.” Is it not, then, well for you, who look forward to spending a lifetime in his society, to know something of the associates he chooses for himself now?
I think I hear some of you asking, “Is it not the business of parents and guardians to satisfy themselves about the position, means, character, associates, and so on, of the man who seeks a daughter in marriage?”
Assuredly it is. But all of you are not blessed with parents, or kind, wise guardians in place of them. Some have not even friends who will interest themselves on behalf of girl acquaintances. Some, again, are ready to blame the young and foolish girls who think so lightly of what is of supreme importance. They laugh, or quote old sayings about “Eating rue pie,” “Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” and so on. One has even noted a look of almost pleasurable anticipation on the face of some acquaintance whose advice has been asked, but not followed, as the remark has been made, “She will find out her mistake soon enough when she gets what she never bargained for.”
Perhaps there may be relatives who are not wholly sorry to be rid of responsibility in regard to girls who have not been amenable to advice or rules. Such wash their hands of the whole affair by the warning, “As you make your bed, so you must lie. Do not look to us for help in future.”
So, when a girl reaps the fruits of a hasty or ill-advised marriage, the most she gets from erewhile friends or kinsfolk, is, “You were warned in time. I told you what would happen.”
Parents, guardians, true friends may do their utmost, but, after all, they cannot do everything. A great part of the responsibility must rest on the girl herself, since they may advise and she refuse to listen. They may picture the prospect before her, she may shut her eyes to it. They may bring facts and figures, she will not discuss them, or will insist that her calculations are right and theirs are wrong. They may point out that the burden of care and toil which would follow such a marriage will prove too heavy for her. She makes light of it, because hitherto she has never felt the reality.
Dear ones, I am dealing mainly with warnings, and that side of the question with which reason has mainly to do, in this our first talk on an all-important subject. We shall look at the love and the beautiful—poetic I had almost said—the heavenly side of it by-and-by. Now, I seem to be looking all the time at the mistakes and follies which, in so many cases, have spoiled lives, and made marriage like anything rather than what God meant it to be.
Is there one amongst you to-night who is getting tired of the daily round in a poor home where all the family are, however, rich in affection? You may have grown weary of the makeshifts and contrivances needful to keep up appearances. You hate to have to calculate how far every shilling will go before you spend it. You long to escape from the narrow round of daily life, almost at any cost. Perhaps you have only to say “Yes,” in order to exchange it for comparative ease and luxury, but you hesitate, and why?
Because your heart tells you that affection will have no share in the compact. Conscience whispers that you only know that your suitor’s worldly circumstances are favourable, but as to his character you are almost in ignorance, and have an uncomfortable feeling that you had better not inquire too closely.
Will you give your life into the keeping of one about whom you know almost nothing, and try to silence heart, conscience and reason by saying to yourself, “A fine home, costly garments, money and social position will make up for all else that is lacking.”
God forbid. All that the world has to offer cannot make amends for the absence of true love and the respect and confidence that should give it stability, neither can it stifle the voice of conscience, which says, “I told you the truth, and you would not listen.”
Sometimes girls are impatient of parental control, and to escape from what is only reasonable and right, determine to rule in a home of their own. They use the hackneyed saying that marriage brings affection with it, but too often realise that the parental yoke was light indeed when compared to what they have voluntarily assumed.
I think I see you turning reproachful eyes upon me, and hear you asking, “How is it that you, who have known such wedded happiness, speak as though you looked on marriage as a thing to be avoided?”
Patience, dear ones. I have been drawing word-pictures from life. You have listened patiently; now I ask you to bear my words in mind. Between this and our next Twilight gathering ask yourselves if any of my warnings have come specially home to you, or if you are in danger of wrecking your own young lives and bringing sorrow on those who love you, in any of the ways against which I have lifted up my voice.
(To be continued.)