Compulsory Marriage

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 6, 1898

Compulsory Marriage.

—A Mrs. Charlotte Smith proposes a system of national Marriage Bureaus, and asks Congress to create her the first “Commissioner of Matrimony,” says a late newspaper despatch. Among the demands made is “that every man and woman of marriageable age be compelled to marry by law.” This is to be enforced by fine and imprisonment, wealthy bachelors to be fined annually a sufficient sum to support a family. Mrs. Smith has memorialized Congress to this effect. Now marriage is a divine institution! It was God who said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make an help meet for him.” Marriage is coeval with the Sabbath; one of the “in-the-beginning” things. Now if it is right and good that man should enforce compulsory Sabbath-keeping, why not compulsory marriage? Of course it is good to keep the Sabbath God commanded. “Marriage is honorable in all.” Why should not the State seek to compel the latter as well as the former? In simple reason it should. But every one knows that a compulsory marriage law would in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred work discord, strife, and evil. A compulsory marriage is not the marriage ordained of God. Well, this is just as true of Sabbath-keeping. True Sabbath-keeping is of choice. It can not be enforced; and any attempt to enforce it is productive of discord, strife, and evil. We can see a thing better sometimes by looking at its principles as reflected in something else. All this effort to compel men in morality or righteousness has its root in the selfish desire of the human heart to exalt itself. Men desire to be as God to rule over their fellow-men. Men can only be won by love to a better life; and the duty of civil government in this respect is purely negative. It should afford equal protection to all its subjects. It should interfere with the natural rights of none. It is in the very nature of the case debarred from interfering with man’s duty to his God.