They Neither Marry Nor Are Given
in Marriage
Henry T. Child, “State Convention. Official Report of the Third Annual Meeting of the New Jersey State Society of Spiritualists and Friends of Progress, held at Plum st. Hall, Camden, N. J., Nov. 20th, 1871,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, December 23, 1871
Remarks of Mrs. Frances Kingman, of Connecticut:
[. . .] The masses show more ignorance than we had given them credit for. The projections of these natural rocks hurled at the heads of falseness—rottenness, have been better than a census for averaging the common sense, perceptions, understanding powers of the Anglo-Saxon race, especially. There is a huge outcry on the principles of “Social Freedom,” and people do not know what they are talking about. The author of the present agitation on the subject is vilified, mocked because prostitution means legality, and her free love means natural law. Do you suppose she advertises lust? Do you suppose she advertises quarrels, divorces? Never! These are the very things she is striving to put down.
When she says she has a right to change her love every day—to love whom she will—or where she will, she does not mean prostitution; she means that nature will assert her freedom outside of every human law; she means that the term denominated “marriage” means only one thing, and it can never mean another. It means that true soul attraction is easily recognized; it admits no question. Policy cannot intervene; it brings no such thing as that parlance “advantageous marriage.” True love—real marriage is the union of natural mutual attraction which all the human laws in the universe cannot effect, prevent or enhance. The vital law of attractive and repulsive is as old as life. If there are not elements of love in you which attract my love, and policy says “‘Tis a match,” and I obey the voice—wedding position, ease, power—am the man’s convenience—love having no part in the bargain—am I not a legal prostitute? Law calls it marriage! ‘Tis false! ‘Tis prostitution! but my nature will not heed human law; it cries for its rights; sighs sadly because it is cheated until a day dawns when its love is attracted naturally to its opposite; it cannot resist the call; it will claim its own; the people call it prostitution—lust. Nature laughs and holds her own. Human law is the seal of respectability. [. . .]
What mean the unity of public atrocities from
church treasury rings, and social oppressions to the rooting out of truth
that has got loose at last? It means, that in the first place, the
true science of “love” must be understood—for love is the life of the world.
St. Paul said, Love is of God, and this is the argument of Victoria C.
Woodhull, and the love of God is not subject to a code of conventional
laws—it lives by mutual attraction which means truth and purity.
God’s love knows no lust, it can have none, and the whole system of compulsion,
of policy, which we employ in the moral church, religious lawful love has
no part in it. All we ask for, is love in its real meaning, freed
from the inquisitorial arrogations and simple simperings of the human law.
Where are the wits of the churches and the pious leaders in morality that
that one sentence, “In heaven they are neither married or given in marriage,”
does not open their blind eyes and show them the meaning of free love,
which is as far from free lust as the heavens are above the earth.
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. Mark 12:25
But never mind—let us be calm, the high intelligences which govern us are nonchalantly holding the plough of truth which is ready to o’er turn the old exhausted earth of paganism—to drop in the new seed of radicalism in the form of social, political and religious stripes for the heights of honor; and if the great and good and wise in the spirit world hold the plough, somebody great and good and wise on earth must be willing to drive the oxen straight through the hard old stubble-field of bigotry; and farmer V. C. W., has got a very long whip in her hand; she sways it without fear of the oxen hooking her; if she stumbles in the furrow over a viper the agricultural [Horace] Greeley puts in her way, she is up again and lashes her team harder, firmer, and, friends, believe me, there is no sepulchre near by from which she will rise again in three or thirty or three hundred days. She will never die. But what means all the great upheaving of the present with social freedom laid as a cornerstone? It means that here has already commenced an agitation which shall shake the continents and islands of earth to their very foundations. Love, marriage, conception, are to be at the depths of everything. These are to be discussed until they are understood, and the people are willing, through the very impossibility to get away from their truths as originated by the Creator, and from which he never has departed, to accept them. Though many complain that we are forestalling matters—that we are prematurely forcing things, plunging into turmoil and trouble, the Spiritualists everywhere do not repeat this again. Remember ‘tis utterly impossible to forestall God or his laws, do what we will, and after all we are subject to that self-executory law which never pays the slightest attention to our efforts or oppositions.
If it were not time for the discussion of “Love,” it would not come among us; if it were not time for Mrs. Woodhull to be reviled and crucified, it would not be. Look back for twenty years, see how all things have ripened perfectly—ripened and rooted that new measures should come forth, see how all religious, political, and social life has become thoroughly rotten. The law of life must be obeyed—newness out of decay; and who dare rise up and attempt to muzzle God when he speaks through the mouths of those whom he appoints? How dare we condemn him when he plainly advertises on the walls of Babylon, “I am ready, I have watched the roll of centuries, I have seen the generations pass away in their sad misconstructions of my laws; but I cannot disturb cause and effect, action and reaction. I cannot leap events—they pass in uniform order—I cannot disturb my forces until they are ready, but now, children of the nineteenth century, I am ready, I have put my finger down firm on the minute of time and cry, Hold! Be brave! I, God, the law of the universe am ready. I rejoice that the day has arrived when I will upheave and rock as in a cradle of souls of all peoples, and they shall cry out with the colic of social pains which I will not heal, until you take my soothing syrup, named ‘unbiased investigation.’”
Friends, bear in mind what I have told you; investigate the natural laws of God and you will find Mrs. Woodhull can no more help her present mission than she can help the Sun’s rising to-morrow morning. Look back, go with me into the retrospect path a little; see how it is strewn with the crosses of reformers; those persons skirmishing in advance of their age. See, from Jesus to the present Christs, how certain ones must suffer and be lashed to the bars of persecution, wear the crown of thorns, be pierced in the side, nailed through the hands and feet, drinking the gall that succeeding generations may walk in the paths of love and peace. If you are constitutionally timid, skeptical, nearsighted, then wait till you throw off your taints, and do not condemn. Do not call the reformers fools, maniacs, and hold yourselves to be the wise ones; you may be the fools and maniacs after all. You know insane people always think others insane.
We do not think you insane; only a little sleepy. You need shaking, and so God has sent forth the shakers. Glory that you live when you may be permitted to take the trowel of regeneration and add a little real mortar to the immense structure of “Justice,” which is destined to be reared ‘ere long, whose corner stone has been laid, I believe, in love to God and man, by one of the most honorable and honored of good angels, Victoria C. Woodhull.
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