LESSON 6.
GOD'S LAW OF MARRIAGE.
"Therefore shall a man [husband] leave his father
45. Obedience to this fundamental marriage law of Genesis
2:24 would have saved women from ever becoming mere
chattels, and thus have kept the entire race on a higher
level. Imagine, please, what could be accomplished even now,
for the elevation of pagan races, if missionaries would
require their converts to observe the Scriptural law of
marriage. The factors that would operate to relieve the
oppression of Oriental women would be as follows: (1) The
husband, as a bread-winner, would have a pecuniary
value in the home of his wife; whereas, as it now is, the
wife, as a producer of more children to be fed, is subject
to abuse, more particularly when she brings forth a female
child. (2) Man, not handicapped by unborn children,
nurslings, or a helpless little brood, could not be reduced
to slavery in an alien home, because he would forsake it,
and leave his helpless wife and children for those who
abused him to support. But the hampering effects of
motherhood, and the strength of mother-love, leave the
mother a victim of those who would enslave her. (3) Man is
not so constituted that he can be robbed, by force, of his
virtue, or his person be made a matter of trade and gain for
an alien household; but these calamities are so frequently
the lot of a widow left in the alien home of her deceased
husband, that in some Oriental countries, notably India, the
very word "widow" is disreputable. (4) Before gestation and
parturition a mother would
generally be tenderly
cared for, if with her own mother, under her father's
roof, or near by. But in an alien home she is often
shamefully neglected at such times; and this weakens the
entire race, in course of time. (5) The practice of keeping
the daughter at home, after marriage, and sending the son
out of the home, after marriage, would put a tremendous
check upon child-marriage, since parents would be in no
great haste to part with wealth-producing members of the
family.
46. All women should know that the Word of God started the
world right, in this regard, and put such a tremendous bar
to her degradation as this marriage law, in the very
forefront of human history,-it being, in fact, the first
social moral law enunciated for human guidance. Moreover,
the testimony is increasing daily, that in the earliest ages
of human history this law was not a dead letter, as it is at
the present time, with few exceptions. It was customary for
the husband either to go and live under the roof of his
wife's parents, or to make frequent visits to her there—she
never leaving the protection of her parents. The parents
were the "natural protectors" of their married
daughters,—not the husband who not infrequently has proved
unworthy of his trust. The early custom was, to eye him with
a certain amount of wholesome suspicion, as an alien, until
he had actually demonstrated his ability to care for a wife
in a proper manner.
47. Above all things, the greatest advantage of a woman
remaining with, or
near, her own kin, after marriage, (her family being her
"natural protectors"), is, that it would conserve
social morality. Some years ago, a physician in one of our
largest cities was given police aid to make a very thorough
investigation into the "social evil" of the city; and he
published the sifted testimony of hundreds of women and
girls in the disreputable ranks of life. I have not his book
at hand to quote from, but his conclusion was, as I
remember, that marriage to wicked men was a prolific
cause of prostitution. Young girls married those who made
love to them, without much thought or knowledge of the
character of the men; and after that, marriage placed them
in such a disadvantageous position, in relation to their
husbands, that they could be driven, or worried, into the
street, to earn money by their vice. Perhaps, in the first
place, the husband may not have married with the object of
compelling his wife to earn her living after such a manner;
but having no proper sense of decency himself, when hard
times came on, he could appreciate no reason why his wife
should not help to earn the living by vice. Now it is
precisely against such emergencies, that a woman's own
kindred ought to have the right to interfere, if any such
danger threatens. The marriage law should allow them to keep
in close touch with their daughter or sister. But as it now
is, such a husband can carry his wife off to the ends of the
earth, if he wish, and no one can hinder his doing so.
48. With what results, one only has to visit a large
Oriental city to learn. We shall not soon forget, to
instance one such investigation only, a visit, after dark,
to a notorious street in one of these great Oriental cities.
Among the many unfortunate girls that we saw, we were told
that a large number were young wives who had thought
themselves married to gentlemen of large affairs in Oriental
business houses. Slave-hunters had found these girls in the
villages of Europe, England and America, they had made love
to them, and gone through a regular marriage ceremony with
them, and then brought them to the Oriental slave-market.
Regularly, every evening, their "husbands" would go the
rounds of the houses they owned, and see that everything was
in order for the night. Then they would go to their near-by
Club House (which we went and saw, in their absence), feast
themselves on the food and drink their slaves had earned,
and return, at two or three o'clock in the morning, after an
abundant carousing, and take away from their slave-wives
every penny that they had earned in the meantime. Often they
flogged them if the amount of money fell below the usual
amount expected. The White Slave Trade will never receive
its death-blow until we have marriage laws which will allow
of an adequate protection of women as against wicked
husbands; and such protection will not be adequate until a
wife's own kindred, if respectable, are recognized by law as
her "natural protectors," laws which will not permit a
husband to take his wife away to a strange country, even if
the over trustful wife
is willing to go, if the removal is against
the judgment of her
family,—that is, unless he can show adequate reason for
doing so, before the courts.
49. Precisely this same abuse of the marriage relation can
be seen among the Japanese (and to a painful extent), on the
Pacific Coast of the United States. There is in Japan a
secret marriage agency, constantly on the lookout for
Japanese girls who will go to America to be married. Also,
men of this agency return to Japan, over and over, to marry
girls and bring them to America.
Often these Japanese
men belong to good families, but they themselves have
become corrupted by residence in foreign parts.
Knowing they
are of good families,
the parents of girls trust them to bring their
daughters away, after they have married them. So
these girls are
entrapped; and every night, in America, they are driven out
upon the street, and to Japanese lodging houses, to earn
money for these "husbands," to whom they were honorably
married. This is no imaginary picture. We have it on the
testimony of Christian Japanese gentlemen, Christian mission
workers, Japanese consuls, and such persons.
What lessons God's marriage law teaches us, as to God's
fatherly care and protection for His daughters! Away back at
the beginning, His first uttered commandment shows that He
had their rights and dignity on His heart.
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