MODERN MARRIAGE.

Shannon News, 10 March 1925, Page 4

MODERN MARRIAGE.

INQUIRY INTO ITS PROBLEMS. MARRIAGE: A STATE OF GRACE. BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES. ! (Author of “Studies in Wives,” Etc.) The old ecclesiastical view that marriage is a state of grace, and not a state of nature, (is one that seems to shock many good and high-minded people. Yet what human being, man or woman, having a long and observant life among their fellows, can doubt that marriage, whatever it is or isn’t, is not a state of nature? Only the very dense or the unconsciously hypocritical can pretend that nature intends, or even encourages, a man and woman to live together in amity and in fidelity till death do them part. It would be a beautiful thing if married love were, by instinct, I what maternal love certainly is in the vast majority of cases; that is, infinitely kind and infinitely long-suffering. But unfortunately for all human beings forming pairt of a civilised community that is not the case. Even what most people would admit to be the highest type of marriage, that is what we must now call old-fashioned Christian marriage, entered into with a certain gravity* and with the firm determination to fulfil the promises set forth in the various forms of the Christian marriage service, requires if not on the side of the wife, then on the side of the husband, a great deal of unselfishness, good humour, broadmindedness, and, I am inclined to add, philosophy as well, to make it a success. It is an unfortunate fact, obvious to every student of human nature, that whereas those who do not regard marriage from a serious point of view are always ready to embark lightly and thoughtlessly on what cannot but be a most serious and, one may almost say,i a dangerous part of life’s journey, the young men and women of to-day who do regard marriage as it should be regarded are apt to shrink from the thought of its duties and responsibilities. And yet, as Stevenßon puts it in so true and moving a way in the most famous of his essays, marriage, if a perilous remedy, is with those who truly love one another a beautiful anchorage, and, so long as death withholds his sickle, the happily-mar-ried man and the happily-married woman, however forlorn his or her , circumstances, will always have a friend at home. Living and Dying. When I see a single man leading an obviously happy, self-satisfied, and even useful and well-filled life, I call to mind the cynical but oh! how true old proverb which says that “A bache--1 lor lives like a king, and dies like a dog.” How many an pld man in every class of life is only really loved, really listened to, and, what is always soothing to the human heart, only really admired and looked up to, by his wife.

Perhaps o'n.e reason why, in spite of what some of our modern prophets may say, the marriages of, say, half a century ago were apt tot be far happier than those of to-day, was owing to the force of public opinion. We have but to recall the amazing sensation which was caused by the separation of Charles Dickens ahd his wife, and by the unlegalised union of George Henry Lewes and the remarkable womap who survives in literature under the 'name of George Eliot, to know how the world has changed. Even what the French so aptly describe as “amiable separations” were the very great exception in the days of our 1 immediate forebears. Everything and everybody then .cohspired to keep even very ill-mated couples together. The pendulum has now swung to the other extreme, and it might almost be said that everything and everybody now to make divorce tantalisingly easy, at any rate for those who can afford to pay for the privilege. What is so surprising to any thoughtful student of human nature is tp find that mahy of the people who are eager advocates of easier divorce are high-minded and eager for the public good. Yet they would probably be the first, were theiir hopes realised, to wish to put back the hands of the clock, as did in later life one of the most distinguished French Republican lawyers of his day who had helped to draft the French law of 1880. To my mind there is no doubt at all that all the good people who now, believing that marriage is a state of nature and not a state of grace, desire to make it as easy for a man and woman to separate as it was for them to come together, will go through exactly the same experience as did those Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who worked for easy divorce close on fifty years ago.

A Fatal Law. An ounce of experience is worth many pounds of cure. Some of us can now remember the shout of joy which went up from the lips of the good, the thoughtful, and the high-minded social reformers when the Judicial Separations Act became law. It is now recognised that no Act more fatal, not only to the happiness, but to the sexual morality, of all those concerned was ever put on the Statute Book. The real remedy is not to make marriage mor e easy, but to make marriage more difficult. It is surely not only a terrible,, but a sobering thought, that in our country hundreds of thousands of young men and women enter upon the most solemn, contract possible in human life far more lightly than they would do were the question that of purchasing a share in a business, or even of taking up some new form of employment ? I suggest that it is ah amazing thing, that whereas tlie law takes steps in and makes it possible for a man or woman to bring a breach of promise action against a faithless lover, no great legal pundit has ever worked out a plan by which the solemn act

of marriage should be retarded for,’ at any rate, sufficient time for the two people concerned to consider the contract into which they are entering at least as earnestly as they would do were it, say, some other new mod e of life.

What should we think of a young man or woman who suddenly announced that he or she was going to throw up his or her present job, and emigrate to a distant colony, with as short a time as was physically possible ? We should think, and rightly think that a change of life undertaken in such haste and with so little thought, was likely to bring neither success nor happiness. Yet this is wliat thousands and thousands of our young countrymen and countrywomen are doing with regard to that allimportant and all-differing-from-the-past-way of life, which it is agreed to call marriage.

If it be true, and without a doubt it often is true, especially in these days, that marriage is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses, then more than ever will each couple concerned require all the help that God’s grace ca'a give them to carry on as a husband and wife ought to do, apart from of their children, but of all those deeverything else for the sake not only peiident on them. HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES. Secretaries an<? members who ise and recommend Q-tol should write Box 1018, Wellington, lor an artistic Pictorial Calendar which is shortly to bj on view at Florists.* GISBORNE COMPETITIONS. The most successful pianist at- the Gisborne Contest supports Mr Harold Whittle in his praise of Q-tol. He practised eight hours daily for some weeks, but kept his hands in perfect order with Q-tol.