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relation which is made the fountain of her deepest sorrows, under the iron reign of sin, becomes itself the well-spring of her salvation, through the law of "faith and charity and holiness" revealed in Jesus Christ. So profoundly true again is that other declaration : The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man;" or as we have it in another place: The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church." (1 Cor. xi. 3; Eph. v. 23.) So intimately close is the union for which the sexual distinction opens the way, and in which alone it comes finally to its true meaning.

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On this union, the primitive and most fundamental form of human fellowship, depends not simply the perpetuation of the race, but the entire problem besides of its social and moral history. It is by means of it, in the first place, that the generic or universal life of man is brought to assert its proper authority over against the life of the individual singly and separately considered. The individual is forced to feel that he is no complete whole in himself; that his nature can be true to its own constitution only by passing beyond his single person, and seeking its necessary complement in another; that in one word, to be a true and full man at all, he must enter into communion with his race, and make himself tributary, in a free way, to the high ends for which he has been placed in the world. This subordination of the single life to the general, is of such vast consequence to the entire plan and structure of the moral world, that it must be secured by an invincible guaranty in the constitution of the world itself. It is curious and instructive to see accordingly, how the law of society, lying as it does at the foundation of all ethics, is here made to take root, as it were, "in the lowest parts of the earth;" illustrating, on a grand scale, the proposition affirmed in the beginning of this article, that all morality has its basis in nature, and is to be regarded as genuine, only as it shows itself to be in very truth the efflorescence of this lower life, bursting upwards into the ethereal region of the spirit.

The bond by which the sexes are thus drawn together is lodged, in the first instance, deep in the physical constitution of

those who are under its power. In this form, it is the sexual appetite or instinct, a purely natural tendency, which has for its object the preservation of the race, as the instinct of hunger is designed to secure the preservation of the single individual. It is the power of the general nature over its own constituent factors or parts, by which these are urged to seek, each in the other, the full sense of their proper bearing, and thus to constitute, in the way of reciprocal appropriation, a living union that may fairly represent both.

But nature here, as elsewhere, is required to lose itself always in the power of a higher life, in which its action shall no longer be blind and unfree, but the product of the spirit itself in its own true form. As the sexual relation extends to the whole person, the union for which it calls can never be complete, except as it is made to embrace this in its full totality, under a strictly central and universal form. It must be a union of mind and will, a process of mutual apprehension, and reciprocal personal appropriation, in the farthest depths of the soul. In no other form can it be truly normal, and answerable to the high purposes it is designed to serve. The sexual tendency, ethicised in this way, and sublimated into the sphere of personality, becomes love. This is always in its very nature something moral and spiritual, springing from the will, and having regard to the inmost person. Still, in the case before us, it is in the fullest sense also sexual. It rests throughout on the distinction of sex, and regards the spirit only as beheld and apprehended under such modification. Hence the legitimate power of beauty, as constituting on the side of either sex to the eye of the other, the outward image and expression of the inward life in its sexual form. true beauty, of course, in this view, falls back upon the spirit, while at the same time its proper revelation is to be sought in the outward person. A sexual interest that includes no regard to beauty must necessarily be immoral, as falling short of that high spiritual region, in which only love finds its suitable home. The merely animal nature, in such case, is suffered to prevail over the human. It belongs to love, not to overthrow absolutely indeed the power of mere sense, but still so to

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cover it at every point with its own superior | of a specific personal life, which is felt to presence, that it shall not be permitted to come into separate view.

Love, as now described, includes in itself always a regard to the sexual character as such; and so far, there is truth and force in the observation of Sterne, that no man ever loves any one woman as he should, who has not at the same time a love for her whole sex. This, however, is only one side of the subject. Love, to be complete, must be also strictly and distinctly individual, determined towards its object as a single person to the exclusion of all others. The single plant is only a specimen of its kind, the particular animal a copy of the tribe to which it belongs. But it is not thus in the human sphere. The individual man is vastly more than a passing exemplification simply of the generic life that flows through his person. He comprehends in himself an independent specific nature, that can be properly represented by no other. His individuality is always at the same time personal, and as such something universal and constant; as on the other hand his personality is always individual, taking its special complexion from the living material nature out of which it springs. Every such individual personality is a world within itself, existing under given relations to other worlds of corresponding nature around it. No two of these are exactly alike, and all by these differences fall short of the measure that belongs to humanity as a whole. This is constituted only by the society and union of the individual personalities into which it falls, joined together morally, not with indiscriminate conjunction, but according to specific reciprocal correspondence, in the way of inward want and supply. The general law of moral association then being such, it must extend of course in full power to the primary and fundamental union which we have now under consideration. It lies in the very conception of love, as already explained, that it should concentrate itself upon the spirit, as revealed under a sexual form; but to do this fully, it must be carried by inward elective affinity towards its object as a particular person. It is not simply the general attraction of sex, that can satisfy its demands; it requires besides that this attraction shall lodge itself in the presence

VOL. II. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

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be such as the necessary complement of its own nature. Under no other form can the union here in question be regarded as moral. It is not every woman that is adapted, physically or spiritually, to be a help-meet for every man; but as the sexes are formed for each other in a general way, so each individual of either sex may be said to be formed for some corresponding individual of the other; and it is of the highest consequence, of course, for themselves and for the race also, that they should be able to find and know each other in the confused wilderness of the world's life.

We may go so far as to say, perhaps, that in a perfectly normal state of the world, this pairing and matching of individual natures would be so complete as to exclude, in every case, all possibility of different choice. Each would be for each, by absolute singularity of mutual suitableness and want, in such a way as to shut out the whole world besides. Of course, our actual life, disordered as it is by sin, cannot be expected or required to conform strictly to this rule of ideal perfection. But still it should include at least an approximation towards it; and it must be regarded as defective, in proportion precisely as it is found to fall short of such high measure. In a state of barbarism, but small account comparatively is made of individual personality, in the commerce of the sexes; which however is simply itself an expression of the barbarous life to which it belongs, showing it to border close on the merely animal existence below it, in which, as there is no personality, so there is no room also for the idea of love in any form. The savage takes his wife very much as a specimen simply of her sex, just as he selects his dog, in the same view, to accompany him in the chase. It is remarkable, too, that in such low stage of moral development, the individual nature itself stands out to view, for the most part, only under dim and indistinct lines. It is the sense of personality in the end, that advances the single life to its legitimate rights and claims, investing it with clearly marked distinction under its own form, and challenging towards it in this way the attention and respect it is entitled to receive. We are furnished here accord

ingly with an unerring standard of civilization and social culture, which in the case before us especially is always of plain and easy application.

The sexual union, representing thus the general relation of the sexes to each other on the one hand, and involving the elective personal affinity of individual natures on the other, mediated throughout by the sacred power of love, comes to its proper expression in the idea of marriage; whose nature, at the same time, is defined and explained by the whole analysis through which we have now passed. This is simply the true and normal form of that commerce and communion, in which the distinction of sex comes at last to its full sense, as the necessary completion of humanity, and the primitive basis of all history and society. The attributes that belong of right to this union, are the true and proper attributes also of marriage; which is not therefore something joined to our nature, as it were, from abroad, and in the way of outward order or device, whether human or divine; but should be considered rather as part of our nature itself, a simple fact in its organic constitution, without whose presence it must cease to exist altogether.

Marriage of course, then, is the process of reciprocal appropriation, by which the sexes, according to their original destination, become one, and so complete themselves each, in the power of a single personal life. In the nature of the case, this double appropriation is required to extend to the entire being of the parties concerned in the transaction; for the sexual difference is such, as we have already seen, that each side of the relation requires the opposite, not in part only, but in full, to make itself complete. This implies, at the same time, a corresponding act of selfabandonment on each side, in favor of the other, as the necessary condition of full mutual appropriation in return. Each yields itself up to be the property of the other, in the very act of embracing this again as its own property. So as regards the merely natural and outward life. The parties are made "one flesh." This is of right, however, only in virtue of the inward spiritual embrace, by which the personality of each is brought to rest in that of the other, by the deep mysterious

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power which belongs to love. The case, in its own nature, admits of no compromise or reserve. Marriage calls solemnly for the gift of the whole being, on the altar of love, and can never be fully satisfied with any sacrifice that is less full and entire. In proportion as the relation comes short of such inward, central community of soul and life, it must be regarded as an imperfect approximation only to its own true idea.

There is a difference indeed in the form of this mutual self-surrendry on the part of the two sexes, corresponding with the order of their general relation as already noticed. As the united person constituted by marriage is required to centre ultimately in man, it follows that the union calls for the largest measure of such free sacrifice on the side of woman. For this, also, she is happily disposed by her whole constitution. Love is emphatically the element of her life. She needs the opportunity of going fully out of herself in this way, in order that she may do full justice to her own nature. There is nothing in life, accordingly, more deep, and beautiful, and full of moral power, than the devotion of woman's love. It goes beyond all that is possible, under the same form, on the side of the other sex. The perfection of marriage, so far as she is concerned, turns on the measure in which she is prepared to make herself over, in body, mind, and outward estate, without limit or reserve, to him whom she has chosen to be her head. The husband is not required to quit himself, exactly to the same extent and in the same way. He may not resign the sense of his more central and universal character, by which precisely he is qualified to become the personal bearer of the united life involved in the marriage bond. All this, however, gives him no right to exercise his independence in a selfish way. It lays him under obligation only to make himself over, in this character, to the possession of his wife, answering thus, with full unbounded fidelity and truth, the full unbounded measure of her confidence and truth. "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies; he that loveth his wife, loveth himself."

The idea of marriage, as now presented, clearly excludes, not only all promiscuous concubinage, but also all polygamy and

divorce. In its very nature, it is the full and enduring union of one man with one woman, according to the law of sexual difference and correspondence. Many outward reasons may be urged against the irregularities now mentioned; but the grand argument in the case at last is just this, that they contradict the true conception of the sexual union itself. This can never take place normally, except in the way of mutual self-surrendry and whole appropriation of each other, on the part of those who are its subjects, that is, in the way of marriage. Polygamy necessarily violates this law; and the same is true also of divorce, which is tolerated by Christianity accordingly only where the marriage bond has been already nullified in fact by the crime of adultery.

We cannot bring the whole subject to a conclusion better, perhaps, than by making use of it to expose, in a direct way, as has been done in some measure indirectly already, the entire theory of what is sometimes styled the emancipation of woman, as held with various modifications, by our modern Fourierites and Socialists of every description. Of all forms of agrarianism this is to be counted, as it is in some respects the most plausible, so also the most mischievous and false. No maxim, universally taken, can be more impudently untrue, than that which asserts the general liberty and equality of the human race in the sense of this disorganizing school. The freedom and independence of all, not only outwardly but inwardly also, is conditioned always by the position assigned to them of God in the social organism to which they belong. All are free only as comprehended in given social relations, and in the measure of their correspondence as parts with the idea of the whole. The proper unity of life, as an organic system, involves of necessity the conception not simply of manifold distinction, but of relative dependence also and subordination. Of this we have a broad, perpetual exemplification, in the constitution of the sexes. The school which we have now in view, affects to vindicate what it calls the rights of woman against the authority of the stronger sex, as though this had taken advantage of its accidental physical superiority in this view, to assert à primacy and lordship here,

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which is in full violation of the original and proper equality of the race. The savage, it is said, turns his wife into a slave, the instrument of his own pleasure and convenience; and it is only a higher order of the same barbarism, by which, in the reigning structure of our present civilization, the whole sex is shorn of its political and public rights, and forced to devote itself to the service of man in the nursery and kitchen. We need in this respect, we are told, a reconstruction of society, in such a way that, among other abuses, this Mohammedan prejudice also may be fully abolished, admitting woman thus to a free participation in all public counsels and transactions, so far as she may show ability for the purpose; and placing her on full level with the opposite sex both at home and abroad. So runs the theory. It has the universal custom of the world against it, and also what would seem to be the most explicit testimony of the Bible. But of this we speak not at present. We meet it here with the moral geology, if we may so term it, of our human nature itself, drawn forth with overwhelming evidence from the everlasting mountains of its original constitution. The theory in question is just as unphilosophical as it is unbiblical and contrary to all history. It violates morality and nature alike.

It is by no accident, or violent wrong merely, that woman is made to occupy a secondary rank in the economy of human society. Her outward weakness makes it necessary, to some extent; but this itself is only the index of a still deeper necessity for it, in her spiritual constitution. All the purposes of her being, all the conditions of her welfare and peace, all the laws of her interior organization, require this subordination to the other sex, and urge her towards it as the only possible way in which her personality can be made complete. This relation of dependence needs to be well fortified indeed against abuse; as it may run easily otherwise into vast tyranny and but still it rewrong; mains forever indispensable in itself to woman's proper life, and under its normal character constitutes emphatically her spiritual salvation. It is not in her physical nature merely that she is formed to lean on man as her necessary prop and stay. He is the ultimate centre also of

her personality, through which alone she can stand in right organic communication with the general world, and so attain to true and solid freedom in her own position. No agrarian radicalism can ever change the moral order of humanity here, for we may say of it precisely as the Psalmist does of the constitution of the planets: "Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven!" The emancipation of these heavenly bodies from their appointed orbits, were just as rational an object of reforming zeal as the attempt to set woman free from her natural subordination to the headship of man. All such freedom is something monstrous in its very nature; and the wrong which it involves can never fail to avenge itself with terrible moral retribution on all concerned in it, wherever it may be allowed. Most disastrous will be its action on woman herself, if she can be tempted thus to forsake her own character and sphere. She must unsex herself, more or less, in the very step; and by doing so, she is necessarily shorn, to the same extent, of all her native dignity and strength. The more thoroughly masculine she may prove herself to be in this way, the more fully and certainly will it be at the cost of all true respect, whether public or private. The process of such unnatural self-dereliction exerts unavoidably, at the same time, a demoralizing influence on her own spirit. She becomes in reality coarse, and the fine gold of her nature is turned into what must be counted at best but common brass. Society, too, is made to suffer necessarily, by the perversion. It requires a certain amount of moral fanaticism, in the first place, to endure at all any such aberration of the sex from its proper sphere, and the thing itself can never fail subsequently to aggravate the evil out of which it thus springs. The influence of woman, exercised in this form, is not at all to refine the face of life, but to render it vulgar and harsh. Such an "emancipation," made general in any community, would involve the overthrow ultimately of all taste and refinement, the downfall of all morality and civilization.

It deserves to be well considered, that this doctrine of the full co-ordination of the sexes in the social system, strikes necessarily at last at the sanctity of the marriage relation. It is the subordination

of the female nature to that of man precisely which makes room for that peculiar union of the two, in which the true idea of marriage consists. The possibility of such an inward personal oneness as it requires in the case of husband and wife, turns not simply on their difference of sex, but on the order also in which this relation is found actually to hold. The common personality which is thus created, must have a real centre on which to rest; and the correspondence between the sexes is such that this is fully and necessarily determined to the one side only, and not to the other. The help which each needs here in the other, is not at all, in this respect, of parallel character. The whole nature of woman urges her towards man, as the necessary centre of her own being; her personality is so constituted, that it can be perfected only by falling over upon the deeper and broader consciousness of man, as its ultimate support. The personality of man, on the contrary, is constitutionally formed to take this central position, and is made complete by woman, not as the basis of his being, but as the necessary integra tion simply of its proper compass and volume. So related, the two are suited to flow together in the power of one and the same life, and may be expected to do so, where the proper conditions are present, by the mysterious union of marriage; which, in such view, is no outward temporary contract of merely civil nature, no simply moral partnership, however high and solemn, for purposes beyond itself; but a mystical, sacramental band rather, that reaches into the inmost sanctuary of life, and is thus of indissoluble force by its very nature. All this, however, is made to assume a different aspect, as soon as we lose sight of the order which holds in the original interior economy of the sexes, and, under the pretence of restoring woman to her inborn rights, admit such a view of her nature as sets it in full parallel with the opposite nature of man. There is no room then for the idea of marriage, as the organic comprehension of two lives in the power of a single personal root. It is impossible to withstand the fatal error, by which it is resolved into the conception of a simply outward compact between independent parties for mutual convenience and profit. Then of course its inviolable

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