Worldly Marriages.

Evening Star, Issue 7484, 31 March 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

Worldly Marriages.

[By Rev. Dr Talmage.]

And there was a man in Maon whose possessions were in Cirmel, and the man was verygreat, and he had three thousand ehcep and a thousand goat?,— 1 Sam. xxv. 2. . My text introduces lis to a drunken bloat of large property. Before the day of safety deposits and Government bonds and national banks, people had their investment in flocks and herds, and this man, Nabal, of the text, had much of his possessions in live stock. He came also of a distinguished family, and had glorious Caleb for an ancestor. But this descendant was a sneak, a churl, a sot, and a fool. Now, that was the man whom Abigail, the lovely and gracious and good woman, married—a tuberose planted beside a thistle, a palm-branch twined into a wreath of deadly nightshade. Surely that was not one of the matches made in Heaven. We throw up our hands in horror at that wedding. How did she ever consent to link her destinies with such a creature? Well, she no doubt thought that it would be an honor to be associated with an aristocratic family ; and no one can despise a great name. Besides this, wealth would come, and with it chains of gold, and mansions lighted by swinging lamps of aromatic oil, and resounding with the cheer of banqueters, seated at tables laden with wines from the richest vineyards, and fruits from ripest orchards, and nuts threshed from foreign woods, and meats smoking in platters of gold, set on by slaves in bright uniform. Before sho plighted her troth with this dissipated man she sometimes said to herself: " How can I endure him? To be associated for life with such a debauchee I cannot and will not!" But then again she said to herself: " It is time I was married ; and this is a cold world to depend on ; and perhaps I might do worse ; and may be I will make a sober man out of him; and marriage is a lottery anyhow." And when, one day, this representative of a great house presented himself in a parenthesis of sobriety, and with an assumed geniality and gallantry of manner, and with promises of fidelity and kindness and selfabnegation, a June morning smiled on a March squall, and the great-souled woman surrendered her happiness to the keeping of this infamous son of fortune, whose possessions were in Carmel. Behold here a domestic tragedy repeated every hour of every day, all over Christendom—marriage for worldly success, without to character. Good and genial character in a man is the very first requisite for a woman's happy marriage. Mistake me not as depreciative of worldly prosperities. There is a religious cant that would seem to represent poverty as a virtue, and wealth as a crime. I can take you through a thousand mansions, where God is as much worshipped as He ever was in a cabin. The Gospel inculcates the virtues which tend toward wealth. The whole tendency of sin is toward poverty, and the whole tendency of righteousness is toward wealth. Godliness is profitable for the life that now is, as well as for that which is to come. No inventory can be made of the picture galleries consecrated to God, and of sculpture and of libraries, and pillared magnificence, and of parks and fountains and gardens in the ownership of good men and women. The two most lordly residences in which I was ever a guest had morning and evening prayers, all the employees present, and all clay long there was an air of cheerful piety in the conversation and behaviour. Lord Radstock carried the Gospel to the Russian nobility. Lord Cavan and Lord Cairns spent their vacation in evangelistic services. Lord Congleton became missionary to Bagdad. And the Christ who was born in an Eastern caravansary has lived in a palace. It is a grand thing to have plenty of money, and horses that don't compel you to take the dust of every lumbering and lazy vehicle ; and books of history that give you a glimpse of all the past; and shelves of poetry to which you may go and ask Milton or Tennyson or Spenser or Tom Moore or Robert Burns to step down and spend an evening with you ; and other shelves to which you may go while you feel disgusted with the shams of the world, and ask Thackeray to express your chagrin, or Charles Dickens to expose Pecksniffianism, or Thomas Carlylc to thunder your indig nation ; or the other shelves where the old Gospel writers stand ready to warn and cheer us, while they open doors into that city which is so bright that the noonday sun is abolished. There is no virtue in owning a horse that takes four minutes to go a mile, if you can own one that can go in a little over two minutes and a half j no virtue in running into the teeth of a northeast wind with thin apparel if you can afford furs; no virtue in being poor when you can honestly be rich. The fact is, that about all the brain and the business genius is on the side of religion. Men may pretend to despise religion, but they are rank hypocrites. The sea-captain was right when he came up to the village on the sea coast, and insisted on paying lOdol to the church, although he did not attend himself. When asked his reason, he said that he had been in the habit of carrying cargoes of oysters and clams from that place, and he found, since that church was built, the people were more honest than they used to be, for before the church was built he often found the load, when he came to count it, a thousand clams short. Yes; godliness is profitable for both worlds. Most of the great, honest, permanent worldly successes are by those who reverence God and the Bible. If a man have nothing but social position and financial resources, a woman who puts her happiness by marriage in his hand "re-enacts the folly of Abigail when she accepted disagreeable Nabal, " whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats." If there be good moral character accompanied by aliluent circumstances, I congratulate you. If not, let the morning lark fly clear of the Rocky Mountain eagle. The sacrifice of women on the altar of social and financial expectation is cruel and stupendous. The worst villain on cirth is the man who, having captured a woman from her father's house, and after the oath of the marriage altar has been pronounced says, by his manner if not his words : " I have you now in my power. What can you do ? My arm is stronger than yours; my voice is louder than yours; my name is mightier than yours. Now crouch before me like a dog. Now crawl away from me like a reptile. You are nothing but a woman, anyhow. Down, you miserable wretch." Can halls of mosaic, can long lines of Etruscan bronze or statuary by Palmer and Powers and Crawford and Chantry and Canova; can galleries rich from the pencil of Bierstadt and Church and Kensett and Cole and Cropsey; could [violins] played on by an Ole Bull, or pianos fingered by a Gottschalk, or solos warbled by a Sonntag; could wardrobes like that of Marie Antoinette; could jewels like those of Eugenie, make a wife in such a companionship happy ? Her gold bracelets are the chains of a lifelong servitude. There is a sword over her every feast, not like that of Damocles staying suspended, but dropping through her lacerated heart. Her wardrobe is full of shrouds for deaths which she dies daily, and she is buried alive, though buried under gorgeous upholstery. There is ono word that sounds under the arches, and rolls along the corridors, and weeps in the falling fountains, and echoes intho shutting of every door, and groans in every note of stringed and wind instrument:—" Woe ! Woe!" The oxen and sheep, in olden times, brought to a temple of Jupiter to be sacrificed, used to be covered with ribbons and flowers ribbons on the horns and flowers on the neck. But the floral and ribboned decoration did not make the stab of the butcher's knife less deathful; and all the chandeliers you hang over such a woman, and all the robes with which you enwrap her, and all the ribbons with which you adorn her, and all the bewitching charms with which you embank her footsteps, are the ribbons and flowers of a horrible butchery. When Abigail finds Nabal, her husband, beastly drunk, as she comes home from interceding for his fortune and life, it was no alleviation that the old brute had possessions in Carmel, and "was very great, and had three thousand sheep and one thousand goats," and he the worst goat among them. The animal in his nature seized the soul and ran oil with it. Before things are right in this world genteel villains are to be expurgated. Instead of bcintf welcomed into respectable society becatibb of the amount of fjtars and garters

and medals and estates they represent, they ought to be fumigated two or three years before they are allowed, without peril to themselves, to put their hand on the door-knob of a moral house. Here is an evil that men cannot stop, but wo.nen may. Keep all such out of your parlors ; have no recognition for them in the street; and no more think of allying your life and destiny with theirs than "gales from Araby "would consent to pass the honeymoon with an Egyptian plague. All that money or social position a bad man brings to a woman in marriage is a splendid despair, a gilded horror, a brilliant agony, a prolonged death ; and the longer the marital union lasts, the more evident will be the fact that she might better never have been born. Yet you and I have been at brilliant weddings, where, before the feast was over, the bridegroom's tongue was thick, and his eye glassy, and his step a stagger, as he clicked glasses with jolly comrades, all going with lightning express train to the fatal crash over the embankment of a ruined life and a lost eternity. Woman, join not your right hand with such a right hand ! Accept from such a one no jewel for finger or ear, lest that sparkle of precious stone turn out to be the eye of a basilisk ; and lot not the ring come on the finger of your right hand, lest that ring turn out to be one link of captivity. In the name of God and Heaven and home; in the name of all time and eternity, I forbid the banns! Consent not to join one of the many regiments of women who have married for worldly success without regard to moral character. If you are ambitious, 0 woman ! for noble affiancing, why not marry a king ? And to that honor you are invited by the Monarch of Heaven and earth, and this day a voice from the sky sounds forth: "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Let Him put upon thee the ring of this royal marriage. Here is an honor worth reaching after. By repentance and faith you may come into a marriage with the Emperor of universal dominion, and you may be an Empress unto God for ever, and reign with Him in palaces that the centuries cannot crumble, or cannonades demolish. High, worldly marriage is not necessary for woman, or marriage of any kind, in order to her happiness. Celibaoy has been honored by the best being that ever lived and his greatest apostle—Christ and Paul. What higher honor could single life on earth have? But what you need, 0 woman, is to be affianced for ever and for ever, and the banns of that marriage I am this moment here and now ready to publish. Let the angels of heaven bend from their galleries of light to witness, while I pronounce you one—a loving God and a forgiven soul.