Year: 1869

Rev. DIR. Lamson, of BrOokline,


Mass, enters his earnest protest
I through the Boston Reflector against


the prevalent doctrine, that the great
majority of marriages are ill-assOrted


and unhappy. He regards this Opin-
/ ion as not only false, but deeply per-


nicious; tending to produce the very
state of things which it asserts to be


so very common. He says that, in


the course of his long ministry of
about thirty years, he has been
brought intO relations of comparative
intimacy with at least four hundred


families, and smOng all these he can
scarcely count a dozen il-aSsorted
marriages. On the contrary, in con-
sidering with how little care mar


riages are often contracted, his habit


ual wonder has been, why there are


not more unhappy marriages than
really exist. In accounting for the
prevalence of the opinion which he
condemns as false and pernicious, DIR.
Lamson suggests, that in most cases
it is the result of reconsideration,


because a single case of unhappy mar
riage, within ones circle of acquain-
tanee, so overtOps and overshadows
the multitude of happy unions.


Another reason might have been
given for the prevalence of this opin-
ion, viz: Few people in estimating
the happiness of a married couple
make due allowance for human i'm
perfection. No two human beings
can be brought into the intimate re-
lationship Of husband anG wife with
out the occasional development of
something discordant. Only perfect,
absolutely sinless persons, could live
absolutely perfect lives together; and
such men and women can never be
found in this world and as in another
world there will be no marrying, alb
solutely perfect marriages can never
be realized either in this world or in
that which is to come. But, are not
the vast majority of married per-
sons quite as happy as an equal num-
Der of unmarried ones? Nay more,
are not the great majority of married
people as happy in their married state
as they would be unmarried2 Aud
still more, are they not as happy with
each other as they would be with any
body else? BY a change of partners
they might get rid of some one or
more causes of disturbances between
them-sOme constitutional defects or
infirmities, or some disagreeable
cherished habits; but they would
find in other parties other causes of
disturbance quite as serious, though
of an entirely different kind; so that
after all, it might be very difficult to
say on which side there was the great
est amount of happiness or misery.
The fact is, that men and women are
susceptible of only given amount of
contentment and happiness, in any
condition of life; and marry whom
they will, they can never exceed their
capacity for enjoyment. Many peo-
pie are foolish enough to imagine that
marriage is the sovereign cure for all
the disquietudes and miseries of life;
and when they get married, and they
find their favorite panaeea does not
work perfectly, they jump to the con-
clusiOn that it is because their mar
riage was not a true one; that it was
ill-assorted, and therefore an unhappy
one; whereas the only trouble is, that
both husband and wife are human
neither divine nor angelie-and
have, like all other human beings,
more or less of sinful infirmity about
them.