thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and
woe--the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are
drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity,
union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be
Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many
cases, a mere outward tie, impelled by custom, policy, interest,
necessity; founded not even in friendship, to say nothing of
love; with every possible inequality of condition and
development. In these heterogeneous unions, we find youth and old
age, beauty and deformity, refinement and vulgarity, virtue and
vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and
goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all
this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad
mothers, and hapless children, who shiver at the hearthstone,
where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and
the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded
for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall say that
it is right to take two beings, so unlike, and anchor them right
side by side, fast bound--to stay all time, until God shall
summon one away?

Do wise, Christian legislators need any arguments to convince
them that the sacredness of the family relation should be
protected at all hazards? The family, that great conservator of
national virtue and strength, how can you hope to build it up in
the midst of violence, debauchery, and excess? Can there be
anything sacred at that family altar, where the chief-priest who
ministers makes sacrifice of human beings, of the weak and the
innocent? where the incense offered up is not to the God of
justice and mercy, but to those heathen divinities, who best may
represent the lost man in all his grossness and deformity? Call
that sacred, where woman, the mother of the race--of a Jesus of
Nazareth--unconscious of the true dignity of her nature, of her
high and holy destiny, consents to live in legalized
prostitution!--her whole soul revolting at such gross
association!--her flesh shivering at the cold contamination of
that embrace, held there by no tie but the iron chain of the law,
and a false and most unnatural public sentiment? Call that
sacred, where innocent chil