University of Virginia Library

UNEQUAL YOKING:
A WARNING TO YOUNG WOMEN.

BY LEROY M. LEE, D.D.,

“Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together,”
is one of the singular prescripts of the Jewish law. But strange
as it may seem, it was founded on good reasons, and is replete
with valuable suggestions. The one, in its relations to the
Mosaic ritual, was clean; the other unclean. Besides, the
differences of form, habit and character of the two animals
would seem to interdict such a combination of labor; and it
was the belief of an ancient writer that its conception must have
been instigated by the father of the whole fraternity of mischief
and contradiction. As a corroboration of the unnaturalness of
the suggestion it may be stated, that when Ulysses would have
it believed that he was mad, he resorted to the device of joining
a horse and an ass to plow. One can hardly think that men,
unhelped of Satan, would join together, in the same yoke, two
animals so entirely dissimilar in their tempers and motions. But
the main object of the prohibition, it is quite certain, was to
oppose a supposition then prevalent among the surrounding
nations—that their fields would be more productive if cultivated
by this process of plowing. Idolatry held and taught that the

gods were propitiated by unnatural contrasts of this kind,—such
as sowing divers kinds of seed together, mixing woollen and
linen in the texture of their clothing, and plowing with an odd
assortment of animals in the yoke. The folly of such arts was
augmented by the feelings that prompted them. The prescript,
therefore, was intended at once to connect the superstition, and
to show the wisdom of the universal law that like cleaves to
its like.

Beyond this, it is not improbable that this law lends a
forcible illustration, if not a presumptive authority to the doctrine
of the apostle, respecting the qualities that constitute
fitness for the marriage relation. An ill-assorted marriage is as
unseemly a piece of yoke-bearing as that prohibited by Moses;
and, if deliberately entered upon, deserves to be regarded as a
proof of the malady assumed by Ulysses when he brought the
noble horse and the stupid ass into the associations of the yoke.
A quaint old writer has depicted the inequalities of such a
union with a remarkable felicity of language and illustration:

Without staying to settle the difficulty of the poet, it may
be assumed that such “husbands” and “wives” are far more
numerous than, for the dignity of the Divine law, and the peace
of human society, they ought to be; and “hapless families,”
therefore, are neither few nor far between. “A hen that
crows” is a rara avis, far more so than the corresponding clause
in the poet's figure. With all of the religious propensities of
their nature, the greatest barrier in the progress of womankind
to the perfection of their social state lies in the repugnance with
which, as by one consent, they regard the law that brings

“commanding wives” and “unnatural lives” into juxtaposition.
But we are treading on the great battle-field of life to
saint, to savage, and to sage, and, therefore, for the present,
assume the counterpart of “a hen that crows.”

But if, in the entire history of that kind of yoking which
of twain makes one flesh, there is a marked and horrid inequality
that chafes until the soul is sore, it is when one half of
this one flesh is addicted to drunkenness! A drunken wife!—
let her name be written on the sand, to be washed out by the
rain, or blown away by the winds of heaven. As a mere
theoretical speculation, she is the least of the two evils of
married drunkenness. But, to the honor of the sex, they are
so scarce that we may not stop to study or depict that last, worst,
and meanest of all moral subjects—a drunken woman. Some
one has said that the most forlorn and pitiable object in life is “a
widow in her weeds of woe.” But we think, desolate as may
be her lot, she has a sister whose lot is desolation augmented by
despair. Her sadness is sunshine, her sorrow, a daily rapture
compared with the unmixed misery of a drunkard's wife. And
this misery in its keenness, intensity and duration will be always
proportioned to the virtue, intelligence and refinement of the
sufferer. As these have breadth and power her days will be a
sigh, her life the long drawn agony of a crushed and bleeding
heart.

That such a woman should be deceived into an alliance
with drunkenness is one of the misfortunes of life. But to
enter it deliberately is a crime well meriting the whole catalogue
of suffering that usually follows in the wake of the vice. The
fact of a young friend, rich in all the adornments of maidenly
attraction and excellence, accepting the proposals of a dissolute
young man, whom she had seen intoxicated, is one of the first
and profoundest horrors that remains in the writer's recollections

of early life. Love is changed with blindness. The allegation
would seem to be true; or else, without rhyme or reason, many
a woman enters into covenant with misery, and foredooms herself
to a long and hopeless companionship with shame and sorrow,
crime and suffering. To such as are draining this cup of
bitterness, acidulated by the consciousness of having mixed it
for themselves, very little can be said, beside the utterance of a
sincere sympathy. But for those not yet yoked, a word of
warning, against such unequal yoking, may not be out of place.

To marry is the first verb in the grammar of female language,
as it is the first article in their creed of social life. It is
to hope and happiness what action is to eloquence,—everything.
It is the territory of bliss on earth; and we are not sure that
the pathway to heaven does not, in the estimation of some, lead
directly through it. At least it is the maternal state of grown
up people; and women are no more to be blamed for desiring
it than the sterner sex, upon whom the laws of civilized life
imposes the obligation of courting. But desire must be reduced
to its last shift, or be utterly reckless when it consents to a life's-alliance
with drunkenness, or with that common use of liquor
that as surely leads to intemperance as consumption does to
death. The history of one such marriage may illustrate a
thousand; and will, if rightly considered, serve as a warning to
every woman who contemplates an entrance into the holy
estate of matrimony. For this purpose we offer a few pages
from the life of one who richly merited a better fate—a sister of
John Wesley, the world-known founder of Methodism.

Mehatabel Wesley, commonly called Hetty, in her
childhood gave such remarkable indications of mental strength
as led her parents to cultivate them with great care and diligence.
Her proficiency in the learned languages was such
that at the early age of eight years she could read the Greek

Testament. Poetry was common to her family, yet it shone
forth in her with a peculiar brilliancy. She was of a gay and
sprightly disposition, full of mirth and good humor, and of a
keen and polished wit. These qualities of mind, set off by a
handsome person and pleasing manners, attracted many aspirants
for her hand. In the crowd of her admirers there was
one whose addresses she accepted, and for whom she felt a
strong affection. But in this case, as in a thousand others, “the
course of true love did not run smooth.” Her father interposed,
refused his consent to the consummation of the engagement,
and compelled her either to abandon her lover, or marry without
the parental blessing on her union. Either offered a severe
trial to duty on the one hand, and inclination on the other.
She sought to comply with the demands of filial duty, without
relinquishing her betrothed; hoping, by patient endurance, ultimately
to secure her father's sanction, and his blessing upon
her union with the man of her choice. But for some cause the
gentlemen, whether from the opposition he met with, or from
fickleness of character, or some worse motive, ceased his attentions,
and abandoned a woman who, at any sacrifice, would
have proved a jewel of priceless value. Her disappointment
was keen; and under the influence of mortified feelings she
seems to have resolved never to marry. But even that vow
was not proof against parental authority. A Mr. Wright, a
plumber, poor, but probably of respectable connexions, soon
sought her in marriage; and his suit was strongly sustained by
her father. She found him utterly unsuited to her in mind,
education and manners. They were unlike in every respect.
She declared her strong disapprobation of the proposal, and
begged that parental authority might not be used to induce her
to adopt a measure that promised no comfort to her, and might
prove her ruin. She pleaded in vain. Her father was inexorable.
Except her sister Mary, afterwards Mrs. Whitelamb
all her family seem to have united against her; at least no
other one took sides with her. She advised resistance to what
she was satisfied would produce misery through life. It was in
allusion to this fact that, when that sister descenced to the grave
so earnestly covetted by herself, she poured forth her soul in
lines of deepest sorrow:

But the victim was decorated in bridal clothes, and offered
a weeping sacrifice upon the altar of domestic unhappiness. A
more ill-assorted marriage was, perhaps, never perpetrated. It
was not long after the prize was gained, before the casket that
contained it was rudely spurned. In a letter to her father, written
not long after her marriage, and in answer to questions as to
her married happiness, she lifts the veil from a picture of connubial
wretchedness, and after holding it for a moment to his
gaze, suddenly drops it, with the words: “I could say much
more; but would rather eternally stifle my sentiments than
have the torment of thinking they agree not with yours.”
There spoke the daughter, true as steel, to her father; and
what treasures of affection were hidden in such a heart. But
how was she as wife? Let us first see what she could have
said if she might have leaned her heart against her father's,
and poured into his bosom the swelling flood of her griefs.
What was her husband? Ignorant, ill-mannered, fond of low
dissolute company, spending his evenings from home, and, last
in the black register of crime, a drunkard. Of the daily agony
such a companion could inflict on an intelligent, virtuous and

forbearing woman, no language is adequate to portray. At any
period of such protracted barbarity the repose of the grave might
have been welcomed as a joyful refuge. But it came not:
weeks ran into months, months into years; and still her husband
preferred any place to home, loved any company better
than hers. With an uncomplaining, but consuming grief, she
bore it all; concealing, with the instinctive delicacy of true
womanly feeling, the vices that were gnawing, like grave-worms,
at the vitals of her happiness.

Once in a poetical address, that stands unrivalled in the
English language, she essayed to win him back to home and its
joys. It was a fruitless expenditure of talent and affection.
But it contains a portraiture of patient submission to the gravest
wrongs, and an appeal that might have moved anything on
earth or in heaven, but failed to move that most insensate of
sentient things—a drunkard's heart. A few extracts from this
inimitable poem, is all a proper regard to space will allow us
to give. After an exordium in which she strives

She addresses him as he
and implores, if he ever saw in her “aught fair, or good,'—
She was still in the bloom and beauty of life.
Had not deprived her form of its loveliness, paled the lustre of
her eyes, nor strewed her face with furrows. The stamp of
matronly dignity gave a charm to the fresh spring time of
womanhood:

“Fret not thyself because of evil doers,” is an injunction
of infinite wisdom. How naturally is fretting, and how common.
But it aggravates rather than cures. From that resort of
impatient suffering she resolutely abstained. With a truthful
energy she demands as a reason for his cold neglect:

Even when the long watches of the night were spent
waiting his return from the haunts of the dissolute, at the voice
of his footfalls she assumed an unfelt cheerfulness, and “smiled
his welcome:”

Despite these efforts to turn his heart to virtue, and make
his “house a paradise,” he still fled

To be abandoned for these was “the unkindest cut of all.”
Agony was born of grief, and disappointment grew into despair.
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” How sick must such
contempt make the soul of a sensitive woman. The “endless
smile” of a sincere desire to please, the enduring love that
sought to recover the lost treasure of a husband's heart, the
energy of soul that concealed its cares and curbed its sighs, if
happly it might achieve that greatest of earthly triumphs for
which she strove, was, in the anticipation of its hoplesness,
transmuted into the bitterness of despair. She had tried too long
and fruitlessly to try again. The fortunes of her heart were
embarked in this last effort; and if she failed, the sky of her
heart was thenceforth to be overcast with the blackness of darkness.
Hoping, yet fearing, she says:

Her own breaking heart must describe the result of this
latest effort to regain his heart, or die. Shall I fail:

Did she conquer? No; from this hour a profounder gloom
seems to have settled on the whole horizon of existence. The
records of her life show that she carried a broken heart through
the wearisome days of her pilgrimage to the tomb. On the
birth of a child, which, in three days, closed up its beauties as a
flower nipt by an untimely frost, she poured forth her soul in
the mournful prayer:

The history of her sorrows is summed up and finished in an
epitaph prepared by her own hand to transmit, from the place
of graves, a cry against drunkenness, and a warning to womankind
against the infatuation of seeking happiness in wedding
even a moderate drinker. Maiden, hear a voice from the grave:

Such is the life's history of one of the noblest and purest

of women. Her sufferings have had a thousand realizations in
the sad experience of drunkards' wives. And yet multitudes
will place their earthly bliss in the keeping of men who are
strong to drink wine. What a fatal error. Woman! If a day
with a drunkard is offensive, what must be a companionship till
the grave opens to you its welcome arms. Looks on this picture
of misery, and shun such a fate.