The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-08-20
MARRIAGE THEME
OF DARING TALK
The Rev. William ThurSton
Brown Gives an Interesting
Lecture.
WOMAN ONLY A FUNCTION
SAYS FUTURE MARRIAGES WILL
BE BASED ON INTELLIGENCE.

In a daring lecture, startling in its
tone, socialistic in its aspect and de-
cidedly revolutionary in its character,
Rev. William Thurston Brown, pastor
of the Unitarian church, before q. large
audience at Unity hall last night made
a vigorous attack on social cOnven-
lions. His subject was What Mar
Ttage Has Been and Is, and What Mar
riage Is to Be" In this lecture he
found the opportunity to inveigh
against existing social, educational and
religious conventiOnaiities-
From Ibsen's Doll House" the lee
turer drew many Of his hypothesis of
the marriage state and used them to
illustrate the tragic consequences which
he declared must ensue from cOnVen-
tiOnal matrimouy. He said that while
Helmar did not represent every hus-
band, he was typical of the average
husband. Nora, in his opinion, was not
the average wife, but she represented
a type of woman, bound down by con-
ventiOns but possessed of an incOnquer-
able desire to become broader than these
| conventions had made her.
The opening of the lecture was a
prayer for greater individualism. Be
| fore the duty of fatherhoOd, of mother
hood, before all other duties, he said,
man owed to himself his first obliga-
ton and that obligation was the right
to think and act for himself, not neces-
sarily as he had been told to act, but
as his own conscience, free from infiu-
| enCe of conventions told him to act.
The lecturer declared that this cOun-
| try or any other country had no right
to inf1ict on it's people laws, the essen
| tial justice of which were not proven
| to every individual In this connection
/ he said:
Justice of the Laws.
There isn't a judge or a lawyer any
| where who is able or has the inClina-
ton to establish in the minds Of Ordi-
nary men the essential justice of the
| laws upon which he passes-neither do
! legislators. And because they do not
| do it, the whole profession is moral
| menace to those who are in it and our
| laws but advertise the essential injus-
| tice and the transient character which
| grow out of them. There is no hope of
moral health in a nation except in the
! spirit of revolution"
| OF the cOnventiOnalities of religion he
said:
LAS for the church you have only to
! think of any orthodox church, / care
not what its name, to know that its
religious teaching is based, not on some
/ thing which any man or woman may
prove by experience to be true, or good,
Or right but on a fixed authOrity-all
| Of them equally worthless for any such
purpose. BY the constitution of the
| human soul-yours, mine, every ones
that only can be right in the last analy-
| sis which is seen and felt to be right
| by each one of us"
The marriage of the present, he said.
made of the woman only a function, the
absolute property Of her husband. She
is not given the choice of being an in
| dividual or a function. The only choice
| she has, according to the lecturer, is
! between a mere fixture and appendage
| Of a household, part and property of a
man. on the one hand, and remaining
outside of the marriage bond either a
| dependent virgin or an Independent
| prostitute. In conclusion he spoke of
the marriage of the future:
Marriage and Intelligence.
THE marriage that is to be will be
| based on lligence-intelligenc on
both sides-nOt ignorance or chance. 1t
! will be based. too, on perfect freedom
and perfect equality between man and
woman In other words, the sacredest
interests of life's supreme sacrament
maria ge-reSt firmly on an economic
basis. No social order under which it
is possible for human beings to be
owned by other human beings in any
way can give us a marriage such as all
the moral and spiritual needs and de-
mands of awakened men and women
call for. The marriage that is to be
will be based upon and grow out of
love. It should not be a matter of sur
prise if there should be many people
} who doubt the existence of such a thing
as love, the multitudes should utterly
despair of ever finding it.
But Ibsen holds the mirror Up to
| our deepest possibilities when he repre-
| sents Nora as making the fearful dis
covery that she has lived eight years
with a strange man and borne him three
! children-a man she never loved. What
worse confession could a woman of the
street make than that? Indeed is it
not certain that quantities of women
upon whom society has fastened its
scarlet letter of condemnation have
been examples Of greater virtue than
half the women in lOVeless homes who
nevertheless, under cover and sanction
of a statute, have borne sons and
daughters to take in their sOiled hands
| and on their stained souls the tremen-
dous tasks of civilization?
There can be no such thing as mar
| riage, i'm any true sense, without love-
| deep, intelligent, worshipful, reverent
? love And I am one of those who be-
, lieve that such love as that grows only
in one sOiI-the soil of common devO-
ton and conservation to a sacred
cause"