1 Samuel 25

1 Samuel 25:3

MADNESS OF UNEQUAL 1 Samuel 25:3I AM to speak to you this evening on a subject that is as old as Eve’s creation, and yet as new and interesting to young life as the latest and most beautiful bride—marriage! My text leads me naturally to a phase of that subject, which, while it may not be so agreeable to contemplate, must be taken into account, or else men, and more often women, make fools of themselves; namely,The madness of unequal marriages. Nabal and Abigail are only one instance where marriage was marred by the inequality and incongruity of contracting parties. The daily reports of our divorce courts are a fearful commentary on our subject, and they serve to emphasize some of the evident suggestions of this text. The question, “Is marriage a failure?” is often raised in jest, and by some seriously. Schopenhauer affirmed with evident sincerity that the man who marries is a fool because he halves his rights and doubles his responsibilities.

But Schopenhauer was a pessimist and so, poorly fitted to determine serious questions for the most optimistic among us. George Eliott’s statement appeals to many: “What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in labor, to rest on each other in sorrow, to minister to each other in pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories, to the moment of the last parting.” But such a wedded life must not be expected when people are guilty of the madness of so unequal a marriage as that our text describes.The story is told that a female orator stormed her audience with an eloquent appeal for woman’s rights, and in stentorian tones asked, “Where would man be but for woman?” to which an evil urchin in the gallery shouted out, “In paradise, mum I” We can hardly agree with the lad.

This world would be a weary place without woman, but it is a perdition with her when she is bad, and it is no better a place for woman when wedded to such a husband as Nabal.Let us attend to certain suggestions:Some equality of social station is essential to successful marriage. In saying this, we are solicitous not to be misunderstood. We do not mean by equality in social station what many employ that sentence to express. We do not mean that they should have equal wealth; we do not mean their blood should be equally red or blue; we do not mean that their youths should have known equally tender breeding. All these things determine little or nothing. The girl of poor birth may easily become the social equal of the son of a multi-millionaire.

Common, country ancestors may easily become the social superior of the bluest blooded daughter of old Virginia’s first family; the roughly bred Lincoln may be a superior suitor for the hand of the most daintily reared child of the land. What we mean by social equality is those features of life that leave two persons on the same common, moral and intellectual level.

They enjoy similar things, participate in life’s privileges with kindred graces, and are, in the judgment of competent critics, fit companions.History has its tragic illustrations of the evil of marriages that disregard alike social station and tastes. You remember how little happiness Madame Roland had in her husband. When, as the beautiful and brilliant girl, Marie Jeanne Philipon, she gave her hand in marriage to the cold, hard-natured Roland, she laid the foundation alike of her marital wretchedness, and her martyr death. Her sorrowful experience ought to speak to every girl in the land in the language of Amos, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed”?In the second place, some equality in moral character is essential to marital bliss. There is no more pernicious idea abroad than that which is so prevalent; namely, that a man’s moral character is not to be reckoned a decisive thing when young women select husbands. The notion that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, but Caesar himself can wallow in the mire when he likes, is a death blow to every hope of wedded happiness.

Abigail was a great fool for ever giving her heart and hand to Nabal, if she knew much of him in advance of the wedding day. Our text says, “He was churlish and evil in his doings”.Probably his property position blinded her to his putrid character.

He had great possessions in Carmel and so seemed a great catch. Those three thousand sheep and one thousand goats very likely got into Abigail’s mother’s eye, and she couldn’t see any other fellow fit enough for her girl. Ah, gold is the wretched gloss over the moral gangrene of many a man’s life that blinds mothers and daughters alike to leprosy! Truly, “a dollar held close to the eye is large enough to shut out the great desert” of woe that lies just beyond the wedding day, and a few hundred thousand dollars will so distemper the vision that a Sahara-waste is seen only in the magic forms of a mirage. But a few feet beyond the bridal altar, where woman gives a pure heart in exchange for stained gold, suffices to lift the veil and let in the white light of truth, and nothing but desolation and despair sweeps out on every side, clean to life’s horizon.Young women, don’t exchange your heart’s affections for the promise of gay dress, costly jewels, splendid equipages and courtly castles. If you are once married to a man whose life is leprous and full of rot, your heart will hurt no less than Romola’s did when she looked on Tito’s beauty, or upon the splendid comforts he provided her, but thought on his dual and dreadful life of lust.It is known that they used to wrap the horns of the ox selected for sacrifice to Jupiter with gay ribbons, and adorn his neck with rare flowers when they led him toward the temple. “But”, said Dr.

Talmage, “the floral and ribboned decoration did not make the stab of the butcher’s knife less deathful, and all the brilliant chandeliers you hang over the woman wedded to an immoral man, all the rich robes with which you enwrap her, and all the costly 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.”But another who despises the thought of marrying for money boasts that she is marrying for love. But the man of her choice is given to wine and women, and she knows it.

In explanation of her act she says she expects to reform him. That is the most colossal of all fool’s errands. A man who won’t quit drink in courting days is dead certain to continue with the cups when the honeymoon has passed. And the man who once leads a licentious life is not in the least likely to be ever free again. He may profess reformation, but like deathbed repentance, it stands for nothing when he gets abroad. You are not unacquainted with that mongrel, yet expressive verse, that speaks such truth: “The devil was sick,The devil a monk would be;The devil was well,The devil a monk was he.”The ethical code of a young woman is likely to determine the moral character of the man she marries* If she likes him best who lives in defiance of righteous laws, and delights in his license, then her bleeding heart and disrupted house, and the eventual clouds of despair, are all consequences of her own folly. But if she has no countenance for his immoralities, then the marriage may be defeated, but she saves her own body and soul, not to speak of the wider circle that wedding effects.“Why did you not take my brother’s arm last night?” said one girl to another. “Because I know him to be licentious, and I didn’t like to touch him,” was the candid reply. “Nonsense!” replied the first. “If you refuse the attentions of all such, you’ll go begging a beaux, I assure you.” “Then I will go begging, as my resolution on that is unalterably fixed!” Would we could increase her kind! There might be fewer flirtations, fewer marriages, but there would be purer men, more virtuous women, more happy homes and more healthy children— more of heaven here below, in consequence.Our last remark is:An ideal marriage should! be characterized by some equality of spiritual habits and natures. The Bible is explicit on that point. By the Old Testament teaching, Israelites might not be married to heathen about them; and the New Testament injunction is, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers”. Paul, in his Letter to the Corinthians, advises those who are married to unbelievers to live with them in love and peace, and adds, “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife”?

But to the unmarried, the injunction, “Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers”. The wisdom of that injunction finds in the daily suffering of Christian women, wedded to unbelievers, a thousand illustrations.It is not a pleasant thing for the wedded one to go to church alone forever.

I meet husbands every now and then who boast themselves most liberal toward the woman that loves them. They say, “I have no objection to her attending church.” Ah, but to go and leave him at home, that’s the mistake. To do so once is no cross, but to continue doing that for twenty or forty years becomes almost an unbearable burden. To have the Lord’s day—that best emblem of the holy heaven—separate us from those that we love, is so suggestive of final separation as to start a hundred pains in the sensitive and tender heart. I know scores of wives, and a few husbands, who walk through this world with a hand over the aching heart as the spirits in the hall of Eblis covered theirs, trying to hide from curious eyes the sorrow felt over the indifference to religion of those related to them by that sacred and tender tie.It is not a pleasant thing to bring up children under contradictory teaching. It confuses and distresses them, while it results in clash of argument and unkindly feeling between those who ought to be unto them perfect examples of love.

It must superinduce doubts, if it does not set adrift the soul altogether. When Ethan Allen was dying, his beautiful daughter came to him with tear-stained, distressed face, and said, “Papa, you have always taught me that the Bible was a Book of myths, and God a creature of the imagination, while mother believes in the Divinity of both.

What shall I believe?” He answered, so it is said, “Accept your mother’s teaching, child, it is more likely true!” But that is a poor time and a pitiable occasion for undoing the doubt that a whole life has fastened upon a young and affectionate heart.Finally, there is much pain in the thought of an eternal separation. One day I read the Scripture which teaches that in Heaven we are neither married nor given in marriage, and my wife, then a bride, heard it, and it took on new meaning to her. That night, with tearful eyes, she asked if that Scripture meant what it said, and added, “If in the hereafter you are not my husband, then there is no Heaven for me.”We may laugh at the needless alarm of the bride, but the thought itself is a serious one. If you took away from the Christian his hope, Biblically based, of a reunion with loved ones in the hereafter, you would rob heaven of one of its chief joys, and come near making immortality meaningless.