Chapter 155—Responsibilities of Marriage
Many have entered the marriage relation who have not acquired
property, and who have had no inheritance. They did not possess
physical strength or mental energy to acquire property. It has been
just such ones who have been in haste to marry, and who have taken
upon themselves responsibilities of which they had no just sense. They
did not possess noble, elevated feelings, and had no just idea of the
duty of a husband and father, and what it would cost them to provide
for the wants of a family. And they manifested no more propriety
in the increase of their families than that shown in their business
transactions....
The marriage institution was designed of Heaven to be a blessing
to man; but, in a general sense, it has been abused in such a manner
as to make it a dreadful curse. Most men and women have acted in
entering the marriage relation as though the only question for them to
settle was whether they loved each other. But they should realize that a
responsibility rests upon them in the marriage relation farther than this.
They should consider whether their offspring will possess physical
health, and mental and moral strength. But few have moved with high
motives, and with elevated considerations which they could not lightly
throw off—that society had claims upon them, that the weight of their
family’s influence would tell in the upward or downward scale.—
A
Solemn Appeal, 63, 64
(Edition: Signs Publishing Company Limited).
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