BT 706 . L5 8 Little, W. J. Knox 1839- 1918 . Holy matrimony # f Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/holymatrimonyOOknox The Oxford Library of Practical Theology EDITED BY THE REV. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M. A. CANON AND CHANCELLOR OF ST. PAUL’S AND THE REV. DARWELL STONE, M. A. PRINCIPAL OF DORCHESTER MISSIONARY COLLEGE 1 HOLY MATRIMONY w BY THE REV. . J. TCN OX LITTLE, M.A. Canon Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 Paternoster Row: London New York, and Bombay 1900 All rights reserved . / EDITORS1 PREFACE The object of the Oxford Library of Practical Theology is to supply some carefully considered teaching on matters of Religion to that large body of devout laymen, who desire instruction, but are not attracted by the learned treatises which appeal to the theologian. One of the needs of the time would seem to be, to translate the solid theological learning, of which there is no lack, into the vernacular of every¬ day practical religion ; and while steering a course between what is called plain teaching on the one hand and erudition on the other, to supply some sound and readable instruction, to those who require it, on the subjects included under the common title 4 The Christian Religion,1 that they may be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear. The Editors, while not holding themselves pre¬ cluded from suggesting criticisms, have regarded their proper task as that of editing, and accordingly they have not interfered with the responsibility of each writer for his treatment of his own subject. W. C. E. N. D. S. b ‘We perceive’ . . . in marriage, ‘liovv closely religion and natural life are intertwined.’ ‘Marriage is the precious foundation and corner-stone of all society.’ PREFACE With regard to the treatment of the subject of this book, nothing need be said by way of preface. The book speaks for itself. Various causes, which need not be particularised, have delayed its appearance. I owe every recognition to the patience and kindness of the Editors and the Publishers. No pains have been spared to treat what seemed to me the chief points of the subject as clearly and fully as space Avould permit. Of course I cannot flatter myself that there are no failures in doing so, but I have done as well as I have been able. I have to acknowledge my obligations to the folloAv- ing Avorks Avhich have been made use of, referred to, or quoted: Keble's Tract on Marriage and Divorce ; Maurice's Social Morality ; Westcott's Social Aspects of Christianity ; NeAvman's Grammar of Assent ; Allies's Formation of Christendom ; Dollinger's First Age of the Church, and Judenthumund Heidentlium; Luthardt s Moral Truths ; Lecky's History of European Morals ; vii Vlll HOLY MATRIMONY Church’s Gifts of Civilisation ; Watkins’s Holy Matri¬ mony, Luckock’s History of Marriage ; and others. In any case where I have believed myself to be quoting the words of others, although it has been from memory and I have been unable to recall the source, inverted commas have been used. I have to give my warmest thanks to the Editors for their valuable suggestions, and to two friends who have revised and corrected my ms. throughout with great pains, at a time when a pressing call of duty has hindered me from doing so myself. I cannot thank them sufficiently. In our own age and our own country the question of marriage is necessarily much before the minds of men. It may be said to lie at the root of all social wellbeing and right religious feeling. I shall be thank¬ ful if I have contributed, in the slightest possible wav even, to impress upon any of my fellow-Churchmen and fellow-countrymen its supremely sacred and serious character. W. J. KNOX LITTLE. May 2 6, 1900. CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE • . II. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE FAMILY «* III. THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 4 IV. THE MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY V. THE BASIS OF THE MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY VI. THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE f VII. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE — BAPTISM, UNITY, CONSENT, UNION VIII. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE - INDISSOLUBILITY I. IX. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE — INDISSOLUBILITY II. . X. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE— INDISSOLUBILITY III. . XI. THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE WITH NEAR OF KIN XII. THE MORAL OBLIGATIONS OF MARRIAGE XIII. THE CONSEQUENT DUTIES OF MARRIAGE - 1. TONE OF LIFE ...... XIV. THE CONSEQUENT DUTIES OF MARRIAGE — II. EDUCA-* TION .... . . ix PAGE 1 12 19 31 44 55 69 77 99 105 120 134 149 157 X HOLY MATRIMONY CHAP. XV. THE RELATIONS CONSEQUENT UPON HOLY MARRIAGE XVI. THE RELATION OF CELIBACY TO HOLY MARRIAGE ? XVII. THE MODERN DANGERS TO HOLY MARRIAGE . f XVIII. THE TRUE PREPARATION FOR HOLY MARRIAGE y" XIX. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF MARRIED LIFE XX. THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF MARRIED LIFE . . XXI. THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF MARRIED LIFE — Continued XXII. THE ENGLISH TRADITION OF HOME AND MARRIAGE . XXIII. MARRIAGE IN RELATION TO HUMANITY AND IM¬ MORTALITY y . . . , INDEX OF SUBJECTS ..... INDEX OF PASSAGES IN HOLY SCRIPTURE REFERRED TO PAGE 170 185 198 210 220 240 249 261 276 291 295 HOLY MATRIMONY / CHAPTER I THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE The question of Marriage is all-important. It stands at the very beginning of human history. It lies at the root of human society. It has been felt that it is right, as it is common in Christendom, to speak of 6 Holy Matrimony," although this peculiar expression is not used of any other of our natural relations, and this fact is a kind of instinctive testimony to the moral importance of marriage. The double nature of man is recognised in marriage, and this recognition witnesses to the importance of the whole question. Man is a creature of two worlds. On the one hand, man is an animal. He is the highest and noblest of the creatures of the animal creation. He has desires and needs and instincts like them. Like them, he is born, and grows, and sinks towards his decline, and dies. Like them, his kind is increased, and he passes on his nature to generations which follow when he is gone. But in the material soil of his marvellous body is also planted the seed of a spiritual being. Man is a spirit. He stands in relation not only to this world, but also to the unseen. He has a sense of the passing character of all that is, but also a sense A 2 HOLY MATRIMONY of eternity. He is conscious of the duty and power of using the higher nature to raise the lower. He feels the need of companionship, of the completing of his life by one of his race. ‘Not like to like, but like in difference/ 1 And so, in numberless expressions of his higher thought in his noblest efforts in literature, woman appears as the embodiment of the ideal, fulfilling and elevating the life of man. The true relation of man with woman must then be of the last importance. This relation is fully expressed only in marriage. No age, more than our own, bears witness to this. Whatever faults and sins there have been in the chequered history of a fallen race, still, in a vast mass of moral questions, there has been advance. Human nature, we know, is not man or woman, but man and woman ; and the idea of humanity is the thought which, more perhaps than any other, has governed this age. This is seen in the immense development — wise or unwise — of philanthropic effort even in the last fifty years. All great movements of recent times have had this idea as their moving spring. The conception of perfection most strongly evident in our age, is the perfection of human nature — by education, by culture, by the use of scientific discoveries, by social readjust¬ ment — and this perfection is aimed at by numbers of earnest people who endeavour to awaken others to what is known as altruism , i.e. to a true realisation of the idea of humanity. In this reawakened and advanc¬ ing interest in the welfare of the race, the deepest and most difficult problems rise up into the relation of man 1 Tennyson, The Princess , vii. THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE 3 to woman and woman to man, and marriage has ever been, in some form or other, an effort towards a true expression of that relation ; hence its importance. How all-important the question is, not merely for those who are or may be married, but for all, is seen when we consider it (1) in its more personal , and (2) in its more social aspects. (1) In the more personal aspects of the question, it connects itself with some of the deepest, and yet most common and most universal mysteries of our being. Whatever does so must be of serious interest to all. It has the closest connection with the mystery of life. There are desires which have, under certain circumstances, to be restrained or suppressed. The possession of a desire, however, cannot be wrong. When we come into the world equipped with a certain outfit of desires, we may be sure that the use of that outfit is intended by God, unless there be some positive law to the contrary. The desire strongest in man is the desire for life. 4 Youth,’ it has been said, 4 is one long prayer for life.’ There is a longing for life always. Even in advancing years, when weakness or pain utter their prophetic warnings of decay, there is still, beneath all, the yearning for a lasting life. This yearning is one of the most mysterious things in our being. It has ramifications everywhere. It runs up into mysteries which the shallow nature or the unthinking mind does not touch. It is a deep thing, a high thing, a very awful and moving thing — this desire for life. Life itself is a thing so deep and so mysterious that we can never, perhaps, fully grasp its significance. We see, it has been again and again pointed out, the signs 4 HOLY MATRIMONY or marks of its existence. We see these signs in all the varied ranks of lower or higher life ; we are con¬ scious of the symbols and indications of a marvellous presence, but to the presence itself we cannot penetrate. The exquisite beauty of the natural world appeals to us in a way quite inexplicable. 6 Deep calleth unto deep’ — that we know. The deep of life in nature to the greater deep of life in man. Everything whispers of it or sings of it, but the marvellous thing itself, the most careful analysis has never revealed. There is in nature and, above all, in man a constant cry for life : — f ’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant. Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; More life, and fuller, that I want/ 1 It is truly enough said that life, in its real meaning, is unknown ; that it is only by degrees that its wealth of possibilities and its unsuspected powers are opened out. For all the powers so wonderfully presented before us in the world — such powers as feeling, with its sharp pains and exquisite pleasures ; and thought, with its fever of penetration and strength of distant flight ; and love, with its unbending energies and all- prevailing influence — are wrapt up and enfolded in life. We know there has been felt something of the mystery of personal life, of the individual life with its special plan, its own limitations, its peculiar destiny. And we know how, in a hundred ways, the individual life is connected with the vast and varying expressions of life everywhere in the world ; how one life is distinct, individual, with undeveloped possibilities and incalcul¬ able forces, and yet how it is not alone, but intertwines 1 Tennyson, The Two Voices. THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE 5 itself with all around it in a richly endowed and most mysterious world. Men have been driven to fancy how the unborn seem to cry for light, for the opportunity of action, for the chance of developing yet fresh, though dependent powers. Men have been unable not to feel the actual delight of existence. Whatever the theories of pessimism, whatever the wails of sorrow in a suffering- world, yet sometime or other, as a revolt against the tyranny of sorrow, or the trials of suffering, voices are heard in mankind recalling the fact that the deepest thing is life, and life meant for joy : — c Oh ! the joy, the joy of living. Oh ! the brightness of breaking day, Oh ! the songs of the birds at the sundawn, Oh ! the bloom and the scent of the may.’ Sometime or other, at any rate in all healthy natures, this positive joy is felt. There is an instinctive delight in the sense of powers enwrapt in life, of which the young soul is only half conscious, a delight growing as the conscience becomes clearer. A suspicion haunts humanity, and grows to a conviction in those who think at all deeply, and exists in some measure even in those who think the least, that there are high and un¬ measured purposes which ought to be recognised and followed in life. In almost all natures, surely there is a sense of delight — noticed even in the intelligent little boy or girl at school — in the possession of facul¬ ties which are gradually opening out, and enabling the possessor to taste the sweets of knowledge and love. And in natures where care and guidance have helped the soul to realise, even in simplest things, its powers of communion with the unseen, and of conscious inter- 6 HOLY MATRIMONY course with God, the sense of the vast capacities of life become clearer still. When experience brings its sad, perhaps, yet strengthening lessons, when advancing years in this world enable man or woman to rejoice, amidst what¬ ever cares, in the wealth that time has brought them — great opportunities, new views of things, dear objects of affection — the soul looking back can see how these lay potentially in that young fresh life which seemed to feel little, like the healthy young animal it was, but the splendour of the sundawn and the freshness of the breeze, and the pleasure of exercising young limbs and shouting songs of delight — for in the healthy young animal lived and lay the powers of a life richer, more varied and lofty and spiritual, taking its root indeed in the soil of physical nature. Men feel the dignity and greatness of life when in each gift of mysterious life there is seen 4 the basis of a character and a career.' We may not fully under¬ stand what life is, but this we know — where it is there is the power to develop, the power to go on from mere beginnings, and in these very beginnings the power to influence in some degree unmeasured destinies. From this sense of the solemnity and sacredness of life, men who have any religious feeling can scarcely fail to feel the vast responsibility of the power of trans¬ mitting life. If this be so, not only may the thought of the vocation for marriage in the future go far to inspirit the young to self-mastery and self-improve¬ ment — for mankind is so closely linked together, that if we would influence our children we must improve ourselves — but there is a further consequence. To serious people it must be of vast importance that the THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE 7 awful and majestic gift of life should be transmitted under the conditions laid down by Religion. The importance of Holy Matrimony, then, is evident when we consider the seriousness and sacredness of life. (2) It is seen also no less clearly in its bearing on civil society. The social question is most interesting and most neces¬ sary for us to consider. Whatever varying views have been held with regard to it, it has always exercised the minds of thinking men. Marriage deeply affects this question, for the family is the foundation of civil society. For the health and preservation of civil society every¬ thing must be done to protect family life. Men have tried to construct theories of society, beginning with the individual. This is a false method. We are not, as a matter of fact, isolated individuals. Each finds himself or herself in the world as the child of two parents. We begin life in a real relation to others, and the well¬ being of society depends upon right relation to others being fostered and preserved. Rousseau himself, not¬ withstanding the many extravagant theories broached in his Emile, was clear-sighted enough to perceive this. He was making a great effort, with whatever mistakes, towards a more entire simplicity of life, and he was wise enough to see that reform in social life must depend upon reform in the life of the family. The family is the first school of that discipline of thought and temper which is absolutely necessary if society is to work well. Wherever the necessary bonds of family life are, in any way, relaxed, or its foundations shaken, society itself must suffer; and hence, when through death or misfortune or sin family life is unable to 8 HOLY MATRIMONY exercise its normal influence, the State finds it necessary to supply the want in whatever measure it can. Man, in fact, is formed for companionship with his fellows. If that com panion, ship is to be what it ought to be for the healthy development of society, he has early to learn a right exercise of authority and obedience, of trust and dependence, of duty and readiness to help others. There are strong and dangerous tendencies in our nature leading to selfishness and isolation ; if society is to be what it ought to be, these have to be tempered and restrained, and this can be done in the natural and loving way in which it ought to be done nowhere but within the circle of home. All the relations which are included in home life are, in fact, the expressions of the essential relations of mankind. It is for this reason that all moralists have felt that an unfailing test of the condition of society is to be found in the estimate of family life formed by any people. The importance of marriage and all connected with it is more than ever deeply imprinted on our minds by those leading ideas of Christianity which make the Christian religion so important a teacher of moral life. Christianity insists upon our condition in this world being that of a race which has suffered from some aboriginal disaster. We are constantly reminded by our religion that human nature is by no means a mass of corruption (as some imperfect forms of Christianity have represented it to be), but that it is, though a ruin, a splendid ruin. Our religion teaches us that a hope of retrieving our misfortune comes to us from the cross of Christ ; that 4 however much we may have to correct or amend, the way of amendment is still one of our unforfeited possessions.'’ THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE 9 But the way of retrieving the disaster, and the way of forgiveness for the fault, are not shown to us by nature. There , everything appears unbending and inexorable, and consequence appears to follow cause with an iron and heartless consistency. They are revealed by the Christian religion. According to its teaching, evil is not natural to man, and it can be overcome ; there is so close a bond between the Eternal Word and human nature, of which Holy Marriage is the expres¬ sion and symbol in this world, that marriage should be guarded by the strongest safeguards ; and to say that men should think of it the highest and noblest thoughts, is only another way of saying that they should be faithful to Christianity, which thus sets its seal on the importance of marriage. Again, the Christian religion insists on the close kinship, we may say brotherhood, that exists in the human race, and especially between those who are in the Church of Christ in this world ; and that, as regards the unseen world, each is preparing himself here for an immortal and incorruptible life ; that 4 all that belongs to the fulness of his nature, all that answers to his continuous growth, all that he gathers round it from day to day in habit and action, all that goes to make up that mysterious sum of powers, passions, senses, feelings, imitations, which he calls his body, is part of what shall be.1 Such beliefs as these are eminently important for social wellbeing, and these beliefs can never be fully carried out unless men have a firm grip of the seriousness and importance of marriage and all that surrounds it. It is a remarkable fact, pointing in the same direction, that wild revolutionists, and all who have 10 HOLY MATRIMONY tried to slacken the bonds of society, have been un¬ friendly to Holy Marriage. It was so in the wilder moments of the French Revolution. Extreme socialism, which would destroy the existing basis of society, has been driven by inexorable logic to support the monstrous notion of community of wives ; but men have very soon felt that this would be injurious to the State and to healthy conditions of population. It is natural that powers of evil, and the forces, whether political or social, which tend to the disintegration of society, should be characterised by antagonism to domestic life. All more serious thinkers on human advancement have ever felt the immense danger involved in any injury to the family; have ever felt like Horace : — f Fecunda culpae secula nuptias primum inquinavere et genus et domos ; hoc fonte derivata clades in patriam populumque fluxit/1 And all this points to the same conclusion : Whether from true thoughts of the serious mystery of life, and the responsibility involved in the use of the power of transmitting life, or from the natural need of rightly regulated fellowship and companionship for man, or from the light thrown upon man's condition and destiny by the Christian revelation, or from the testimony of revolutionists in their attack upon the restraints of domestic life, or from the serious dangers to civil society which come from any tampering with 1 ‘ ’Twas generations fruitful of crime that first polluted wedlock, race and home : hence sprang a flood of calamity to whelm our country and our people.’ — Godley’s translation, Odes , iii. 6, 17-20. THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE 11 right regulations as to family life, as well as the incalculable blessings which flow to it from a due respect to those relations, — it becomes certain that we cannot well over-estimate the importance of everything that affects marriage. CHAPTER II <• THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE FAMILY The importance of Holy Matrimony and its bearing on human society is most clearly realised when we consider the family. This cannot fail to be taken into account in any rational view of human nature. It gains however a graver seriousness and a deeper mean¬ ing when it is considered in the light of religion. The need of companionship of man with woman, and the right conditions of such companionship, give, of course, to marriage its great interest and dignity ; but that dignity is raised and that interest increased when it is remembered that, religiously speaking, the family, as properly constituted, depends upon marriage. Religion illuminates two important facts of our existence. It has brought into prominence the single¬ ness and separateness of every living soul ; and conse¬ quently, the truth of individual responsibility, and the importance of the action of the individual will. If this were all, we should learn each to make himself the centre of all things, and we should fall into the mistake of some social moralists of attempting to construct society out of the individual. But it is not all ; there is another fact of the highest importance, that is, the 12 RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE FAMILY 13 fact of heredity. We are closely connected with all who have preceded us in the journey of life; we hardly know to what extent we are indebted to them for what we possess and for what we are, whether for evil or for good. Anyhow, our very existence is conditioned by this fact, and if we are to take any true measure of that existence, such a fact cannot be ignored. We may, indeed we do, feel our separate personality ; but we do not find ourselves alone and independent when we wake up to our life in this world. Each one of us begins by being a member of a family ; every one of us finds himself in a relationship to two human beings, a father and a mother, and he cannot enter upon life without that relationship existing, as the primary fact with which he has to do. As religious people, we say that this is according to the law of God. Religion teaches us that God is a God of order, and that certain great facts of life are ordered by Him on regular methods, which we call laws. It is then one of God's laws that every child must have two parents, and by the establishment of this law He indicates the religious foundation of the But more than that. By an observation of human life and by the study of religion, we become aware that in this God reveals to us much of His own nature. The Christian revelation teaches us that in the one substantial life of the one God, there are three Sub¬ sistences or Persons — as the language of the Church is — and that therefore within the Being of the God we worship there are eternal relations, an eternal fellow¬ ship. The necessary relations of the family, relations 14 HOLY MATRIMONY which we do not choose, but must accept, are a natural manifestation of this Divine fact, and by it their seriousness and sacredness is illuminated ; we feel, from it, how real is the religious aspect of the family, and therefore how more than ever sacred and dignified is Holy Marriage. Then, further, there may be and there are calls to a single life. There are, of course, as we know, lives which from circumstances or from duties cannot be other than single ; nevertheless, it remains a fact that, speaking of humanity broadly, a single life is an incomplete life. Human nature is not man or woman ; it is man and woman. Each, alone, expresses an incomplete idea of human nature ; the relationship of husband and wife when ordered according to God's law expresses the complete idea of man. We know that in modern times, owing to social difficulties, owing very often also to a faulty view of the need of comforts in life, it has become more and more the fashion, and indeed more and more necessary, to help men and women to stand alone ; still, without the rightly ordered influence of each upon each the nature of each is incomplete. Each can offer its own tribute of service which the other cannot offer, and so the nature of each is expanded, enlarged, raised, purified, completed by the other. Exaggerated efforts have sometimes been made — not only to help woman to stand alone, when that is necessary and to a great extent inevitable — but to encourage woman to forget the special gifts of her womanliness, and to play at being a kind of man. All such attempts can hardly prevail for very long; but they are sure to be an injury to the human race. It must never be forgotten that, ordinarily speaking, RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE FAMILY 15 completed human nature is to be found in the union of man and woman according to God’s law. In this union, when it is rightly effected, there are several characteristics recognised by religion. It is meant to include and to show forth absolute trust, entire self¬ surrender, a thorough-going faithfulness ; and so to be the outward sign or representation in this life of the wonderful fact that God has not been content without a real union with creation, without complete human and Divine communion, as shown forth by the Incarna¬ tion of the Eternal Word. The Church on the whole has felt, and probably feels more every day, that the union of God with His created Universe through Christ is a Divine fact of the widest significance. The more this is felt, the more light seems to be thrown upon the mysterious sayings of Holy Scripture in regard to the 4 restitution of all things,’ and 4 the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together.’ In spite of the enormous power of evil, we are constantly reminded that there are hopes and possibilities for the world beyond our imagination. We are led to hope for a time when life will triumph without the com¬ panionship of death, when 4 there will be that which will make up for all losses, and recompense all toil, and obliterate all sufferings, and efface the memory of even shame.’ These mysterious truths, to the depth of which we cannot fully penetrate, depend upon that wonderful Divine counsel of God’s union with created things, of which the setting forth is Holy Marriage. This, then, is the crowning relationship ; and it depends upon choice. By it, all human relationships are elevated and extended. What is needed for the well¬ being of society, and indeed for existence — equality, 16 HOLY MATRIMONY and authority and dependence, and mutual service, and completion of possibilities of help and support — are all involved in it. This is that religious aspect of marriage, looking at which, we begin to realise the wide sweep of its importance. For out of this, there come — in the way of God’s appointment — other relations. The first characteristic of these is, that they are independent of choice ; we find ourselves in them, we do not create them, and we cannot get rid of them. No one has made himself a brother, or a son ; he is such, without his choosing ; and from this there comes a Divine witness, from the very nature of things, of some of those necessary moral ties of human life, to snap which is to dislocate or destroy society. Authority has about it a Divine beauty, which comes from God Himself, and it is the special characteristic of fatherhood. It has been truly taught us by a great moral teacher, that for a human father to allow himself to exercise dominion , is to forget his noblest prerogative. The author of our being, in its earthly life, brings to us, or ought to bring to us, the sacredness of the idea of authority , and so lifts, or should lift us up to the thought of the ultimate Author of our being — our Father which is in heaven. It is not the exercise of compulsion and domination which will ever give real weight to a parent’s teaching ; it is the exercise of a loving authority. Dependence and obedience are ideas which grow out of the fact of sonship ; a son only learns true independence and true power of command by the exercise of dependence upon, and obedience to, his father. These great things, no mere exercise of power, outside life itself, can either create or destroy ; there is a manly nobility in the / RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE FAMILY 17 \ submission of a son ; there is a sweet and solemn grandeur in the wise command of a father : in this there is the majestic greatness of authority; in that there is the beautiful dignity of obedience. Both are supremely religious, and carry us back to the depth and reality of eternal things ; they reveal the necessary laws of a true and healthy society. Faithfulness to these relations, and the gradual assimilation of the ideas which they represent, are the infallible marks of a great and advancing people. Low natures are ever inclined to licence, and disinclined to liberty. Centuries ago the Roman historian was struck by the characteristics of our own ancestors, who — still barbarians — overthrew the legions under Varus, to the utter astonishment of the Roman world. He had the penetration to perceive the moral causes which lay at the root of their success : the barbarians were manly, he says ; they were truth- loving ; above all, they had respect for woman and the virtues which create and surround a Christian home. The 4 law-abiding 1 Englishman, who has a just detesta¬ tion of lawlessness and mere licence, perhaps does not always realise how much of this noble spirit is due to the religious sense of English family life. The fifth commandment has its roots in Divine things and in the high necessities of social wellbeing ; it passes out into social relations ; it gives sanction to the true relative position of masters and servants, to the responsible duties of the master, to the equally responsible sacred¬ ness of service. In the same way, the relation of brothers and sisters, which has its special seriousness and dignity from Holy Marriage, points to the important ideas taught by the religious view of family life. This relation again does B 18 HOLY MATRIMONY not depend upon choice ; it is inherent, it is necessary, it is lasting : and just as fatherhood and sonship make demands upon our moral energies, so does this. It is meant clearly — on its religious side — to teach us 4 sweet reasonableness,’ and consideration, and helpfulness, and sacrifice. These ideas extend into society ; they forbid mere selfish isolation ; they put their ban upon any mere corporate selfishness ; they keep manly and generous influences alive. Just as the father of a family is intended to be the guardian of the rest, and should learn by his necessary position to be sensible of responsibilities laid upon him to spend for them time and health and money and thought and affection ; just as the son may learn submission and loyalty, respect and considerate attentiveness; just as the brother naturally absorbs the ideas of loving equality and kindly self-sacrifice — so, fatherhood, sonship, and brotherhood extend further and further in widening circles, first among those who through circumstances or affection are providentially placed in these relation¬ ships, even though not of the same family, and then in the case of others towards whom human feeling is rightly extended after it has been trained in the nursery of home. It is thus that the family, religiously considered, is not only the truest type of the Church of Christ, but is the actual cause, as well as training-ground, of those virtues which make for a healthy society. The more we dwell upon the deep meaning of the religious aspect of family life, the more we see how grave are the questions which are involved in Holy Matrimony. CHAPTER III THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD The moral condition, and therefore the wellbeing, of any people is most surely measured by its estimate of the place of woman and of the dignity of marriage. As society depends upon the family, and family life depends upon marriage, and marriage in its true sense depends upon the right relation of man and woman ; so these questions are of supreme importance in form¬ ing a true estimate of the glory or degradation of any people. If nations become relaxed in their principles as to the true place of woman and the true dignity of marriage, those nations are so far forth on the road to decay. Other forces, such as great intel¬ lectual endowments, or long established and useful traditions and customs, may retard that decay; but let any people cease to have something of a true respect for the marriage bond, and for the right relation between man and woman, that nation — whether the process be quick or slow — is already on the road to ruin. Nothing is more clearly taught us in history than this. We cannot violate moral principles, which lie at the very root of a healthy condition of things, 19 20 HOLY MATRIMONY without injuring health and introducing the germs of disease. Diseases may work slowly or quickly, but unless they are checked and cured, in the long-run they lead to death ; and as it is in the physical, so it is in the moral world. 4 Whatsoever a man soweth, that 1 (and nothing else) 4 shall he also reap,1 1 is an unalterable law in moral life. For this reason, every Christian must feel that a true grasp of God’s will and commandment as to Holy Matrimony is of the first importance. And we see, plainly enough, from history that deviations from the Divine intention as to the relation of man and woman have been attended with the gravest consequences. The Greeks were in many respects the most wonderful people of the world. They possessed intel¬ lectual gifts of the highest order. They have left behind them a literature which in many ways has never been surpassed or even approached ; they were endowed with great physical courage, and they possessed wonderful physical beauty ; their sense of the beautiful was of the keenest, and they had marvellous artistic power in the expression of that sense, especially in sculpture. They were a people who were eminently alive , and had the keenest appreciation of life, and that too, in many respects, of a most refined order. They had the capacity for entering into the deepest thoughts, and for interest¬ ing themselves in the most complicated philosophical problems. They knew the meaning of real affections ; they had a high admiration for nobility of character ; and small in numbers as they were, and divided up into many petty and quarrelling states, they have been in many ways ever since the intellectual trainers of the civilised world. To cast a glance on the condition of 1 Gal. vi. 7. THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 21 such a people, with reference to the subject before us, must bring into strong relief the importance of Christian teaching as to marriage. In the earlier period of Greek civilisation, down to the time of the Peloponnesian war, there are signs of a high ideal of marriage in the Greek mind. The wife appears to hold a dignified position. She is looked upon at first, not as a slave, but as the companion of the husband, and the regular rule was certainly that of monogamy. Gradually much of the better side of this state of things passed away ; the wife held still a certain position of dignity as the mistress of her house ; but she came to be looked upon less and less as the companion of the husband’s life and joys and sorrows, and more as an instrument for the birth and bringing up of Greek citizens. From this it naturally followed that the bringing up of children suffered and the influence of the mother was diminished. Amidst the glories of the age of Pericles there had grown to be recognised in Athens a class of ladies in the position of Aspasia or Phryne, who were often gifted with great brilliancy and intellectual capacity, and were recognised as the real companions of the men over whom they held sway. This, of course, tended more and more to degrade and then destroy true thoughts of marriage and home. The consequence was, that gradually the most frightful vices were permitted and encouraged, and the low level to which morality was falling can be seen by the way in which such vices are spoken of by some of the best men of the time. At Sparta, by reason of the character of the people, society seems always to have been coarser than at Athens. There, whatever respect was shown to the wife was 22 HOLY MATRIMONY simply shown to her as to one who was necessary for the birth of citizens, and this view produced coarse and degrading consequences. As the history of Greece goes on, and the people became more and more affected by Eastern manners, as indeed already under the Mace¬ donian supremacy, there seems to have been a steady decline in the morality of marriage. In later Greece, there came the evils arising out of small families. The people were too idle or too luxurious to like the trouble and responsibility of the bringing up of children, and there came about a dislike of marriage and an avoidance of it. Men declined to accept the trouble of large families, and took means to avoid having them. The system of slavery brought with it the usual demoralisation ; everywhere there was moral degradation. The historian Polybius deplores the state of things in his own days. 6 It is the accordant opinion of all,’ he says, 6 that Greece now enjoys the greatest comfort of life, and yet there is want of men, desolation of cities ; so that the land begins to lose its fruitfulness through want of cultivation. The reason is, out of softness, love of comfort and of ease, men, even if they live in the state of marriage, will bring up no children, or only one or two, in order to leave a good inheritance. Thus the evil becomes ever greater ; since, if war or sickness takes away the one child, the family dies out.’1 Side by side with all this there ex¬ isted, of course, as always in such cases, the most degrad¬ ing immorality, and as a consequence Greek civilisation, life, and influence passed to its decline and fall. 1 Polybius, Hist. Exc. Vatic, ed. Geel, Lugd. Bat. 1829, pp. 105-7. Quoted in a shortened form, as above, by Dollinger, Heide7ithum tend Judent/mm , pp. 692-3. THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 23 The history of marriage in ancient Home is instruc¬ tive in the same way. For some centuries marriage seems to have been held in the highest estimation ; and it is said that for some five hundred years at any rate, from the time that we first know anything clearly of Roman history, divorce was never dreamt of. The wife in old Rome held a position of the highest dignity; there was a lofty sense of the sacredness of domestic life, and the marriage ceremony itself was of a serious and religious character. If the position of the father was one rather of domination than of authority, and if the tenderer side of human love was somewhat lost sight of, still the importance of family relationships was kept in view, and there was a respectful, if rugged, sense of the obligations of children to parents, and this tended in the right direction. In early Rome, as was natural, the great ideas of respect, of duty, of purity, held sway over the people through their respect for the marriage-bond. It was not probable, however, that such a state of things could be maintained, not to say developed to its highest condition, without the aids of a supernatural religion. So long as Rome was com¬ paratively young and under more simple and primitive conditions, and was not exposed to temptations from the vices of other nations, all went fairly well ; but the time came when Rome began to extend her dominions out into the world. As long as domestic life was pure, the State was strong. From about the time of the Punic wars a process of gradual deterioration set in. Soon after this, conquest followed upon conquest, and the vices and the vicious forms of religion belonging to other, especially Eastern, nations more and more corrupted the early Roman simplicity. The immense influx of 24 HOLY MATRIMONY slaves which came with the conquests of the Empire led to licentious habits ; women became corrupted as well as men ; and as the Empire rose in power and wealth and luxury, the position of woman became more degraded. Virtue, that high virtue of which woman is especially the expression and the ideal, was almost lost : respect for woman naturally sank to the lowest point, and with it, of course, all right feelings with regard to marriage and to family life were lost. To meet the temptations which had come from Eastern conquest and the influx of slaves, there was no power strong enough. Civilisation is a blessing where it lifts men to higher thoughts and better things ; corrupt civilisation is a curse ; that curse fell with its full force upon the Roman Empire. The high virtues of woman, the old sanctities of home, were all undermined. The picture drawn by St. Paul in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is a good] expression of the consequences of a state of things depicted before by the Roman poet — fiEtas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem.’ 1 Nothing could be more deplorable than the state of society depicted by Juvenal and Tacitus ; corruption was as complete as it is possible to imagine. The few good and high-minded men that were left looked out o o upon society, and only uttered a wail of despair. It was not only that all bonds were loosened, but that vice marched shamelessly forward with triumphant fearless¬ ness : every kind of misery, suffering, and degradation 1 ‘ Our fathers, worse in their generation than our grandsires, begat us their viler progeny, soon to leave an offspring yet more vicious. ’ — Godley’s translation, Horace, Odes , iii. 6, 46-48. THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 25 went side by side with frightful luxury and cruelty. There was no power to withstand the steady disintegra¬ tion of things ; there was no real religion. But the important thing to note is this — that such civilisation as there was, was powerless to withstand the advance of social decay when once the right relation of man and woman had been forgotten ; when respect, obedi¬ ence, self-restraint, affection — the necessary ideas of family life — had been lost ; and when Holy Marriage in any high and sacred sense had practically become a thing of the past. It is a striking fact that Roman civilisation was in itself marvellously robust. Civilisation has been defined to be that which arranges 4 primarily directly for this life.’ It requires, as we understand it, that men should aim at ‘justice, honesty, humanity, honour, the love of truth, and that moderation in word and act which is so akin to truth." As we know it, it has learnt many lessons from Christianity, and it is more complete and more powerful now than it was once. It has great inherent forces, but it always falls short in itself of that special force which belongs to religion ; it has been truly said, 4 Civilisation is the wisdom and the wit of this world ; and its office is for this world. If it makes the best of this world, in the highest sense of the word, this is the utmost it can do. Beyond the present — and I include in this the futurity, as far as we can conceive it, of our condition here — it does not pretend to go."1 We are used to a civilisation which has been deeply moved and strongly touched by Christianity. The civilisation of Rome was a very grand thing ; it showed the inherent power in strong and vigorous manhood to 1 Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, p. 125. 26 HOLY MATRIMONY rise high. There were plenty of things in it which were detestable and disastrous, but unfortunately that may be said of our own civilisation, which has had so many more advantages. It had about it, notwithstand¬ ing, much that was robust and vigorous ; it had lofty and serious aims ; it had many forces in it, tending to make for a noble life ; nevertheless, it fell, became corrupt, and perished. The reason is, that the prin¬ ciples upon which society rests were assailed and betrayed. The old and great traditions and customs which assisted to preserve early simplicity and purity of character, the traditions and customs affecting the relation between man and woman, and the sanctities of home, and the consecration of these by religion (such as it was), were gradually undermined ; and when these were undermined, it was only a question of time as to when the social fabric would collapse. For in the event of such undermining, 4 it had no power and spring of recovery’; just as it had been with the Greeks, so it turned out even with a people so strong as the Romans, that when the morality of the old world failed in the primary and important relations of life, i.e. in marriage and all that is connected with marriage, every¬ thing else was on the road to ruin. If the morality of the old world was unstable and then shaken to its foundations in the case of the greatest of Western peoples, much more was it in ruins in the East. Woman, among the Eastern nations, speaking broadly, has ever been the slave or plaything of man or the mere object of his passions. The people of Israel took, of course, a higher position ; the Mosaic Law with them was a great reform. There had been, as we know from the sacred records, very serious THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 27 degeneracy in the ages before Abraham was called to be the father of God’s elect people; whatever the meaning of Holy Scripture may be as to the sins of the £sons of God’ with the ‘daughters of men,’ there is no doubt that it points to some serious moral failure. The early Scripture records point to the throwing away of moral restraint, to the advance of ungoverned licentiousness, to the unbridled condition of fallen humanity, which sets moral rules at defiance, and is described as 6 corruption ’ and c violence.’ We read of two catastrophes, the one world-wide, the other on a smaller scale — the Flood and the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah ; and the cause assigned for both these judgments is the state of moral corruption into which mankind had fallen. The same was the cause of the destruction of the Canaanites. At times, it seems to us as if the treatment to which they were subjected was terribly severe. After all — in the counsels of Him who knows all things — it may have been merci¬ ful. It is certain, at any rate, from the sacred record, that punishment came upon them on account of their moral degradation. W e find a record of fleshly corrup¬ tion all through the history of the Patriarchs; even among the best of them, there was evidently only a very partial sense of the true relation of man and woman. Allowance had to be made for their very imperfect knowledge, and for their condition as that of men living in a mere twilight of revelation. Isaac and Hebekah seem to be solitary instances of something like a high and true view of married fidelity, and in this character they are referred to in our own Marriage Service. Even in so noble a character as that of Abraham, and (whatever his faults) so serious a 28 HOLY MATRIMONY character as Jacob, the 4 times of ignorance ’ had to be 6 winked at." The Mosaic legislation was a partial revelation and a reform. Even here, however, polygamy had to be treated as a practice which had gained a foothold, and had to be regulated and restrained, but could not be entirely abolished. Divorce was undoubtedly per¬ mitted; but only because of 4 hardness of heart," i.c. of the imperfectness of moral sense to which it was impossible to bring home the full meaning of the truth. Nor perhaps was it possible for the truth to be thoroughly carried out in life, under conditions where there was not yet sufficient supernatural strength to overcome and restrain the natural passions of fallen man. But though divorce was permitted, it was per¬ mitted only under the strictest limitations ; it was permitted for 4 something shameful," or 4 some unclean¬ ness. ’ The two schools of Rabbinical interpreters were at variance as to their interpretation of the Mosaic Law. The laxer school of Hillel interpreted it as referring to very slight and trivial reasons ; the stricter school of Shammai interpreted it as referring to unchaste behaviour. We know that when the matter was referred to our Lord, He astonished His hearers by teaching them that any permission of divorce only witnessed to a moral decline, and that 4 from the beginning it was not so." Throughout the whole history of Israel there are records of terrible lapses into fleshly sins : the partial revelation indeed, which was granted to the chosen people, and their greater nearness to God through their prophets and the sacred ministrations of their religion, in some degree held in check the forces of human sin. Nevertheless, when our Lord THE MORALITY OF THE OLD WORLD 29 came, He found abundant corruption ; the morality of the old world of Israel was in certain respects but little above that of the nations outside the Covenant. It is a striking fact that it was in the northern nations — then mere barbarians — that there lived some true sense of the relation of man to woman, and conse¬ quently these barbarians — our ancestors — were strong. Of them it has been well said ; 4 Only in the far horizon of the North there is a streak of light, fitful indeed as the sunbeam among those storm-regions. There a half¬ nomad race, fallen into a wild idolatry and in perpetual feud with each other, yet have this single distinction above their personal bravery and freedom, that they honour woman. They have but their yoke of oxen, their caparisoned horse, and their arms ; but what they have, they give in marriage to the partner of their choice, as a token that she is to share with them every labour and danger of life, all its battle, but the glory and the suffering alike. They have, and they are almost alone among barbarians in having, but one wife, and they are faithful to her. No youth, no beauty, no wealth, will make up in their eyes for the loss of virtue in woman. Fashion is powerless there, to make vice merely ridiculous, says the admiring Roman.1 1 Looking back upon the old world then, we see that its strength gradually declined, because its sense of the dignity of marriage was lost. The right of divorce — shamefully abused both by Greeks and Romans and by Hebrews — a right, for the most part, exercised only by the man, and only in later Roman times by the woman, destroyed, as it always must destroy, true respect for woman and for the marriage-bond. Any sense of the 1 Allies, Formation of Christendom , pp. 286, 287. 30 HOLY MATRIMONY sacredness of marriage was gradually lost, as the sin of adultery on the part of the man was not considered of any account whatsoever. Relations practically poly¬ gamous degraded marriage. And thus the three great safeguards of marriage — its indissolubility, its sacredness, and its unity — gradually passed out of the moral horizon of mankind. Among the young and vigorous northern tribes, as we have seen, there remained in many respects a healthier state of things ; and this gave them their strength, and made of them splendid material for a future, civilised Christendom. Speaking broadly, how¬ ever, there had been a steady, moral deterioration with only occasional checks, in the old world. Woman had sunk into a state of degradation ; a high sense of the meaning of home and family life was lost ; hideous and shameless crimes abounded ; the sense of obliga¬ tion, and especially of the highest obligation, of rightly giving birth to, and bringing up, the generation which was to follow as possessor of the earth, — these were gone. As there was a general decay, so there was a general misery and despair : nothing could undo so disastrous a result but a radical reform in men's thoughts and principles as to marriage. Could such a reform come ? and how ? CHAPTER IV THE MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY There had been, as we have seen, a high tone of morality in many instances in the old world. The level, however, was uneven ; and when from altered circumstances in national life, such as arose from the wide conquests of Rome, there issued strong tempta¬ tions, morality grievously degenerated. There was, in fact, no power of recovery ; there was no religious basis to fall back upon. Whenever there was a failure in moral life, it was sure to show itself ; and it showed itself, in fact, in some wrong view of the relation of man and woman. When Christianity came into the world, it based its great moral reformation upon religion. There had been in the old world, of course, some vague notions of the connection of religion and morality ; Plato's doctrine of Ideas had about it a certain religious character, and he more or less conceived of life on earth as being in some way framed on a heavenly pattern. Other great philosophers denied this ; with Aristotle it would appear that human conduct was only interesting and important as determined, not by any thought of another world, or by any relation of man to a higher being than himself, but rather by what seemed reason- 31 32 HOLY MATRIMONY able about his own nature. The morality of life had to do entirely with the relation of man to his fellow- creatures, in so far as that relation seemed to be exhibited by right reason. In the old world, religion and morality parted company, and 4 the outcome of the ancient world was an immoral religion and an irreligious morality/ We may take it as a truth that 4 history shows that such religion is doomed, that such morality is impotent. This result of history proves that the two, religion and morality, are assigned to each other, that their truth is only found in their union. That alone is true religion which produces a vigorous morality, and that alone is a vigorous morality which arises from true religion/1 It was quite certain, therefore, that in the old world, the moral deterioration which we have noticed in the last chapter was bound to come. And it was'' equally certain that it was bound to touch that deepest of all questions — the question we are considering. It was not that there were no instances of noble, married life in ancient Rome ; such instances there were. Some mag¬ nificent instances of wifely devotion and fidelity are certainly to be found in the most corrupt age of the Empire. They are, however, like solitary beacons, show¬ ing the depth of the darkness around ; for the general moral tone as to purity, and chastity, and the relation of the sexes was at the lowest, and excesses, perhaps unparalleled in the history of human iniquity, abounded in the face of day. Things had reached a pass so terrible, that it seemed that if human society was to last at all, a change must come. A change did come ; Christianity came, with 1 Luthardt, Moral Truths of Christianity , Lecture i. pp. 18, 19. MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 33 its strong and clear moral system, perfectly practical, going into details for the regulation of the several relations of life, and with a strength to withstand, in the long-run, the assaults of evil, because it based its moral system upon religion. We may dwell presently upon the great foundation facts which gave such power to the Christian reform of social morality ; for the present, it is well to consider some of the principles and tendencies of thought, and consequent authori¬ tative enactments, which followed from the Christian revelation, and influenced immensely the whole question of the relation of the sexes, of the position of woman, and of the dignity of marriage. For various reasons, which we do not dwell upon at the moment, one principle became very prominent. Undoubtedly, in the early days of Christianity, a more lofty view was held of the beauty of purity than, it is probable, had ever been held before. It gradually per¬ vaded the Church and altered the whole atmosphere of human life. It is almost impossible for us to realise the contrast between ‘the world,’ with its unbridled licentiousness and the comparatively small body that bore the Christian name. As Christianity spread ; as the leaven worked, ‘leavening the whole lump,’ this great idea came more and more into power. It is one of the truest marks of the supernatural strength of Christianity that this idea has never been perman¬ ently dethroned. There has been plenty of moral wickedness in Christendom : there are terrible problems in our own time unsolved ; but vice still pays a homage to virtue ; and there is a strong sense in the minds of the nations of Christendom, even amongst those whose lives by no means correspond with their convictions, c 34 HOLY MATRIMONY that purity is a healthy and a noble virtue, and that consequently it is impossible to be quite rid of the idea of the dignity of woman. In the early days of the Church, when Christianity came into power, the revolu¬ tion in this respect was conspicuous. The laws of the early Christian emperors against any infringement of the moral law, and for the encouragement of a high tone in the relation of man and woman, were severe and even savage. Some of the legislation probably attempted too much, as the Puritans did in later times, and overshot the mark, and did harm. But some was of the most beneficent character, and sup¬ pressed or held in check incentives to vice, and set at liberty some who were enslaved against their will to evil customs. If the State did much in this direction, so certainly did the Church. The penitential discipline of the Church was a very real thing. Suspension from communion, or exclusion from communion for long periods, or even until the close of life, was felt to be a very serious punishment, in days when faith was strong ; and it was a punishment that was inflicted in the case of serious moral delinquencies. There was very great need that the last remnants of heathen immorality should be rooted out with a strong hand ; and in view of the necessity of a high view of marriage for the wellbeing of society at large, and the laxity that had prevailed, nothing but a strong reassertion of the moral law, backed by a Divine religion, could be sufficient for the purpose. Among other forces brought to bear in the early Church was the instinct of asceticism. It is true that this feeling became in some respects fanatical, and as time went on led to some evil results. Still, it repre- MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 35 sentcd a great truth ; it was a natural result of a necessary reaction ; and it raised human thought on moral questions to a higher level. It represented a great truth, because the higher nature of man is infinitely more valuable than the lower ; because things of sense must be subordinated to spiritual things ; because the whole of man's nature has to be sanctified by a high sense of his spiritual dignity ; because it profits a man less than nothing 6 if he gain the whole world and lose himself, or be cast awayd It was also a natural reaction. For, once the light of Divine truth fell upon it, the human mind began to realise with awful force the depth of the degradation into which human nature had fallen ; and even by natural laws, much more by Divine grace, the reaction was of corresponding intensity. It did a great deal of good — whatever evils came afterwards from its exaggeration — for it made plain before the eyes of men of what great efforts human nature, induced by a high motive aud strengthened by Divine influence, is capable, even against the fiercest natural powers known to man. Akin to this, the same lofty influence was exerted by the splendid heroism of the Virgin Martyrs ; such examples as those of S. Blandina and S. Agnes sank into the hearts of men and women and aroused their imaginations to realise the beauty and strength of purity. The Acta Sanctorum are full of nohle legends, for the most part authentic, and always representing real truths, which produced the same effect. Out of all this, there came a noble influence from Christianity, leading men and women to admire and emulate splendid examples, and to realise and love the virtue of chastity. And this was a motive which stimulated the charity of 36 HOLY MATRIMONY the Church towards those who had fallen. The philan¬ thropic efforts of modern days to save those who have fallen from the paths of virtue, only follow the example of the early Christians and of the Church in the Middle Ages. In the calendar of one or other part of the Church there are enumerated amongst the saints many who had once been slaves of sensual vice ; such as S. Mary Magdalene, S. Mary of Egypt, S. Afra (about whom, however, there is some doubt), S. Pelagia, S. Thais, and S. Theodota, and in later times, S. Margarita of Cortona and others. There was a genuine enthusiasm for reclaiming those who had fallen, which shows the high value attached to purity. Naturally along with this, there was a restoration of the dignity of marriage. The fact that it had been represented by the great Apostle as the sacramental witness in the world, and the outward expression of the indissoluble union of Christ with His Church, had sunk deep into the minds of men. There are noble words as to the sacredness of marriage in early writers which testify to this ; and even later, in the Middle Ages, there are fine sayings of the same sort, to the effect that woman was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler ; nor from his feet, for she was not intended to be his slave ; but from his side, for she was to be his companion and his comfort. It must be acknowledged, however, that, by reaction no doubt from the dissoluteness of the past, there came to be an exaggerated value set upon celibacy and virginity, and that lower views of marriage were encouraged, which were injurious in the long-run to human morality. The relation designed for continuing the generations of the human family came to be in MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 37 many instances looked upon as a result of sin, and marriage came to be regarded almost exclusively on its lowest side. It is not unnatural that it should have been so ; the virginal life presented to the mind of the Church a fascinating picture. It was a life of free self-dedication of those who put aside some of the greatest permitted joys of human life in order to devote themselves wholly to Christ. If marriage was consecrated as being the very image of the Incarnation, so the virginal life seemed to be the very image of that by which the Incarnation itself was wrought. It was a constant and an entire sacrifice ; it enabled men to achieve some of those lofty acts of self-denial which are spoken of in the Gospels ; it gave a certain inde¬ pendence of things of the world, and freed the life from cares and duties which are necessarily involved in marriage. It was natural enough that this should be the case, as a reaction against a time of ambition and luxury and worldliness and unbridled licentious¬ ness ; it had its good and its great side, but like all good things, it was liable to exaggeration, and then to degeneracy. There is no doubt that, paradoxical as it may appear, the fascination of asceticism and the extreme self-renunciation of the virginal life at once elevated the idea of marriage and depressed it. It elevated it, because it brought prominently before the eyes of men the beauty of self-denial and chastity. It at last depressed it, because it inclined men to look at Holy Marriage as a less perfect state, and to take a low view of it, as if it did not involve, as it does, right ideas of purity. There is no special dignity or great¬ ness in an unmarried life, except so far as it is under¬ taken for the glory of God and for the special benefit 38 HOLY MATRIMONY of our fellow-creatures. Married life, when rightly entered into, may be one of very high self-denial and of great virtue. The exaggeration of the really true idea of the dignity of virginal life resulted in evils which became serious ; the mode of speaking of the three vows of 4 poverty, chastity, and obedience ’ is a witness to this. It rather shows the somewhat Manichaean tendency which has always haunted, more or less, some minds in the Church to look upon marriage as a 4 concession 1 to man’s weakness, instead of, as it is, a very holy vocation. It would be right to speak of the three vows as 4 poverty, celibacy, and obedience,’ for chastity is required of all Christians, married or unmarried. The fact is that as time went on, from various causes, the earlier and nobler thoughts of the Church on the subject deteriorated. Celibacy, especially in the clergy, is in many very noble and necessary self-denial for the advancement of God’s work, and in our own days more necessary perhaps than ever ; but it is not more noble than any other supreme act of self-renunciation made for high purposes — just as a noble and pure-minded soldier may deny himself the joys (and also, be it remembered, spare himself the anxieties) of domestic life for the sake of his country. In the period when the Church was emerging from persecution, or when it was undergoing persecution, there seems to have been a much stronger feeling of the needs of the individual soul than of the needs of society. It was not that these latter were lost sight of ; but as Christianity, in fact, may be said to have restored the idea of personal life and of the value of the single soul, as distinct from the idea of the value of the State and its citizens, so it was MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 39 natural, and indeed necessary, that greater stress should be laid upon that side of things. Social morality was indeed taught and strongly enforced by the Gospel ; but in the state in which the world found itself when the Church had greatest opportunities for doing its work, personal morality was the first need that had to be insisted upon. It has been said, not untruly, by a distinguished historian : 4 It is remark¬ able how rarely, if ever (I cannot call to mind an instance), in the discussions of the comparative merits of marriage and celibacy, the social advantages appear to have occurred to the mind. ... It is always argued with relation to the interests and the perfection of the individual soul, and even with regard to that the writers seem almost unconscious of the softening and humanising effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love.1 1 In the early Middle Ages, and since that period, in the Roman Church, the celibacy of the clergy has been made compulsory. At first the ministration of married clergy had been allowed ;1 2 then it was discountenanced ; then at last forbidden. No doubt this was partly due to the mistaken view of the dignity of celibacy which has been alluded to. The thing grew, however, also out of a very just and high conception of the nobility of a dedicated state ; it was forgotten that to some men the dedicated state was only possible and could only be perfect in Holy Marriage. Men who had distinctly the vocation for marriage were able to dedicate them- 1 Milman, History of Christianity , iii. 196. 2 There are competent authorities who hold that, according to the primitive rule, the married might be ordained, but priests might not marry. 40 HOLY MATRIMONY selves to their sacred callings more completely and single-heartedly as married men, if they married rightly, than as celibates. But again, another reason was purely practical : there were many works in the Ministry, as there are many — especially of a missionary character — for which men who are freed from the ties that belong to the Christian home, were and are much better fitted. And we cannot doubt that the enforcement of celibacy, especially from the time of Hildebrand onwards, was due in a great measure to the policy of a severe and strict discipline in the Roman Church, and aimed at binding the clergy closely to the Papacy. This, of course, could be much better done when the clergy to a great degree ceased to have the feelings of ordinary citizens with wives and children of their own, and were formed into a kind of caste, or class apart. The dreadful consequences of enforced celibacy, and the evils that have resulted from it to the Church, have shown clearly enough that although the tendency to encourage celibacy as a holy vocation and a dedication of the whole man for Divine work was right and good, the enforcing of it, especially when it seemed to cast a slur upon Holy Marriage, was thoroughly bad. Apart from these measures relating to the clergy, which arose in great part from reasons of policy and of a practical character, the Christian Church from the first and at all times, even in its darkest moments, has taught the dignity of marriage and the true position of woman, and has been a great reforming power in all moral questions. The strong feeling in the early Church as to second marriages is a witness to the same thing; that feeling had existed to a certain MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 41 extent in pre-Christian times. Some moralists have supposed that this resulted from a low view of marriage. I believe it to have been quite the reverse. The same feeling prevailed to a certain extent in the ancient world. Virgil expresses the sentiment by the lips of Dido ; 1 and some Roman wives, we know, were 4 widows indeed ’ after the death of their husbands, and lived retired lives and cherished the memory of those who were gone. The family of Camillus is noted for the absence of second marriages, and the poet Statius declares that 4 to love a wife when living is a pleasure ; to love her when dead is an act of religion.’ The feeling was stronger with regard to women than to men. This beautiful sentiment arising from a high estimate of married love was deepened and enlarged in the Church. Very strong things, and sometimes perhaps extravagant things, were said on the subject ; but there was a distinct and vigorous feeling in the early days of the Church against second marriages, and as for persons marrying more than twice, this was looked upon as shocking in the extreme. Any lay¬ man who married twice was excluded from the priest¬ hood, and was not admitted to Communion until after a period of penance. And although in extreme cases of necessity laymen were permitted to administer the 1 ‘ Huic uni forsan potui succumbere culpse. Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat, Vel ....... Ante, Pudor, quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo.’ ‘To this one sin perchance I might have come. . . . But, for me, let earth first yawn to lowest hell . . . ere ever I wrong thee, Chastity, or relax thy laws’ (s&neid, iv. 19 sqq. ). 42 HOLY MATRIMONY sacrament of Baptism, they were not so permitted if they had been married a second time. It may be that these views and practices were extreme, and somewhat rigid, but at least they show the high ideal of married love which was fostered by the Christian Church. With whatever faults, or with whatever extravagances, the Church at any rate raised before the minds apd imaginations of men the virtue of chastity, and the nobility and sacredness of marriage, and the dignity of womanhood. According to this teaching, so new to the world, 4 the Christian’s body is a temple of God, sanctified for His service, and inhabited by the Holy Ghost ; chastity is the pure priestly feeling which preserves the body from be¬ coming a mere instrument of sensual desire, and hallows it, to be an organ of the Divine Will in the generation of children, making it part of the one offering to be continually presented to God, as being united to the human nature of the Redeemer, and destined to be raised and glorified hereafter. For therein is shown the power and reality of a religion which masters the most vehement and unbridled of our passions, subject as it is to such terrible perversion, and easily degenerating from a fount of life into a deadly poison that pollutes the very sources of our being. Here Christianity gains its hardest and most beneficial victory. Dishonour of woman, contempt of marriage, celibacy and childlessness from corruption, selfishness and mutual criminality, facility of divorce and re-marriage ... all these moral abominations, springing from the same root, prevailed far and wide, and desolated whole provinces. The Church opposed to them her notion of chastity, her consecration of marriage, her MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 43 absolute prohibition of divorce, and her praise of con¬ tinence and virginity. She taught and showed that the wife is not the mere chattel of the man ’ . . . nor merely 4 for perpetuating his family, but his equal, joined to him in a sacred and indissoluble bond. . . . Chastity was considered the virtue which above all gives moral strength and self-mastery to the soul, and preserves it from being made effeminate and pressed down under the weight of the body. Nor does Christian teaching recognise in marriage love any involuntary feeling, depriving man of his liberty of will and action ; such a sentiment the Apostles would have called by a very different name. The marriage love which they hold to be a duty in Christians is a free and conscious direction of will, grounded on high religious motives — a feeling under their own control, not an unbridled passion — a feeling which can be made as pure and enduring as love of friends, or children, or country. 1 1 All this was very different from the views that had commonly prevailed before. On the whole marriage question, on the whole relation of man to woman, and woman to man, the Christian Church was a great reforming society, and the result of its efforts was a great reform ; and whatever fallings away there have been since, within the bounds of Christendom — and there is no doubt they have been abundant — these strong reforming moral principles have ever carried with them, what was unknown to the old world — a power of recovery. 1 Dollinger, The First Age of the Church , pp. 251, 252. CHAPTER V THE BASIS OF THE MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY That there has been a great moral reform with regard to the relation of man and woman, and therefore of the whole question of marriage, there can be no doubt. It is equally certain that, whatever mistakes have been made, that reform has come through the Christian Church. It would be idle to deny the terrible moral lapses of which many in Christendom have been guilty from time to time ; but to say this is only to acknow¬ ledge that Christianity and the Christian Church have had to cope with that strange and stubborn thing — fallen human nature. The wonderful thing is, not that there have been lapses, but that, in spite of them, there have been such astonishing recoveries. It is of import¬ ance to consider the basis on which that reform rested, and that for many reasons. From such a consideration we see why it took hold of mankind, but, above all, upon what alone it can hope to stand. That reform rested upon religion. There is a considerable tendency in our own day to push forward secular culture, whilst ignoring the need of religious teaching. The great rush of life, the need for the young to lose no time and push forward vigor- 44 MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 45 ously if they are to succeed, make the present life and its claims so vivid and so pressing, that there is a danger of forgetting the life beyond. The Church may have erred at one time in so putting forward the need of preparation for another world as to place some¬ what in the shade the need of preparation for this. If so, it is not the error of the present time. What are called philanthropic enterprises and social schemes almost exclusively employ the thoughts and take up the time of many Christians. It is good that these should be attended to ; but there is considerable danger lest they should be so attended to as almost to exclude, or at any rate to throw into the background, thoughts of the necessary truths of religion, and of direct and spiritual duty to God. There is an effort therefore, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, to produce and act upon a social morality resting entirely on itself. This may do for a time, but in the long-run it will not stand. 4 A moral philosophy which ignores Christi¬ anity, ignores also actual morality, and thus renders itself unpractical. If ethical science is, on the contrary, pervaded by the principles of Christianity, it cannot forbear entering into the religious element of morality." The truth is that 4 religion shows how the great moral contrasts of the world are reconciled by God, and morality shows how man is to reconcile them in his life in the world. But this can be done only on the ground of the fact alluded to. For only the certainty that reconciliation already exists on the part of God can impart a cheerful willingness in labouring at the moral work of reconciliation ; while it, at the same time, involves a demand that this principle of religion should be carried out in the world of morality." 46 HOLY MATRIMONY It is surely clear that when we say a thing ought to be, whether in personal or social matters, we mean, and we must mean, that we owe something to another; that is, as any serious, religious person must believe, we owe it to God. Moral obligation therefore can only fully exist where there is some sense of the relation of the soul to God, i.e. of religion. Moral obligation, as it was understood without Chris¬ tianity, took little notice of anything beyond the cardinal virtues — wisdom, justice, valour, and prudence; but this referred merely to the relations of man to man in civil life, and they were powerless to touch many of those relations, and especially the most serious of all — the relation of man to woman. The Stoic philosophy had indeed its strong point. It had a notion of universal brotherhood and of the close tie between human beings — which, as we have seen, can only be truly felt and properly carried out when the family is taken as the unit of society, i.e. when the solemnity of marriage is in some sense realised. With the Stoics it was a notion and nothing more ; they did not go deep enough, for there was nothing to which to go. The something which alone could be found as a solid foundation for individual and social morality was and is a true sense of the personal God. In other words, morality — and especially a morality which, like that of marriage, claims to guide, rule, and tame the most vehement and wayward of human passions — must be based upon religion. The Christian religion brought to light, and drove strongly into the hearts of mankind, just those truths which are needed for so great an enterprise. For according to Christian revelation there is an inter-com- MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 47 munion of real and essential love within the substantial Life of the Godhead. This truth, upon which so much depends in shaping our thoughts, is impoverished by all Unitarian forms of thought. In the great mystery of the Holy Trinity, it is necessary for the Catholic Christian to believe that essentially and from all eternity there is this inter-communion of perfect love within the Divine Life. The very idea of an inter¬ change of love and sympathy enters therefore into our fundamental thoughts as to the Life of God. And from this it is clear that perfect love, as a Divine ideal, must be the centre of human intercourse and the foundation of the relations of human life if we are, as we are, made in the image of God. But more than that, the Christian revelation gives us more particular ideas as to the character of that love. What may be called natural Theism leads us a long way towards the belief in One God ; that is, of 4 a God who is numerically One ; who is Personal, the Author, Sustainer, and Finisher of all things ; the Life of law and order, the Moral Governor ; One who is Supreme and Sole ; like Himself, unlike all things besides Him¬ self, which all are but His creatures ; distinct from, independent of them all ; One who is Self-existing, absolutely Infinite, who has ever been and will be, to whom nothing is past or future ; who is all perfection, and the fulness and Archetype of every possible excellence, the Truth itself, Wisdom, Love, Justice, Holiness; One who is All-powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent, Incomprehensible. These are some of the distinctive prerogatives’ 1 of the great God. And we learn to know Him, it is acutely said, very much 1 Newman, Grammar of Assent , p. 98. 48 HOLY MATRIMONY as we learn to know one another. 4 When it is said that we cannot see God, this is undeniable ; but in what sense have we a discernment of His creatures, of the individual beings which surround us ? The evidence which we have of their presence lies in the phenomena which address our senses, and our warrant for taking this for evidence is our instinctive certitude that they are evidence. . . . Therefore when we speak of our having a picture of the things which are perceived through the senses, we mean a certain representation, true as far as it goes, but not adequate. And so of those intellectual objects which are brought home to us through our senses : — that they exist, we know by instinct ; that they are such and such, we apprehend from the impressions that they leave upon our minds. Thus the life and writings of 44 any great men ” leave upon us certain impressions of the intellectual and moral character of each of them.’ We cannot mistake or confuse one with the other ; 4 in each case we see the man in his language.’’1 We know perfectly well, we know by instinct, which is its own evidence, that the person we think of is not a mere impression on our senses ; of what sort he is, we know by the nature of the impression upon us. Now it is truly enough argued that our knowledge of God is very much of this kind. If certain sensible phenomena are evidence of the presence of others, certain mental phenomena fulfil the same office as regards God. Those mental phenomena we call the sense of moral obligation. We find that there is a sanction, higher than anything which comes merely from ourselves, in the voice of conscience. So conscience 1 Newman, Grammar of Assent , pp. 99, 100. MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 49 and the moral sense really enable us to know God up to a certain point — something of His character, in approving good and disapproving evil ; something of His authority in making us feel our responsibility to One above us. So much, natural Theism would teach us. But the Christian revelation goes further. In the substantial life of the One God, that religion puts before us three Persons. The word person, 4 though it cannot mean precisely the same when used of God as when it is used of man, yet may be sufficiently explained by that common use, to allow of its being intelligibly applied to the Divine Nature ’ ; 1 it brings to us a reality which suggests, however deep the mystery may be, 4 motives for devotion and faithful obedience"; it puts before us a basis of moral relations. For it speaks to us distinctly of a Father, with all a father’s characteristics, at once with love and authority, because the source and origin of life. It puts before us a Son with all perfect filial characteristics. It is remarkable that the Divine Wisdom, by which title the Second Person in the Holy Trinity is so constantly referred to in the earlier Scriptures, is identified in the later with the Word and the Son. In human life nothing can be imagined closer, in some respects, to a man than the son who receives his life from him, and the word which is the embodiment of his thought. Both these titles are used to show the distinctness of the Second Person from the First, yet their oneness, and relation in the mystery of the Trinity. It reveals to us also 4 the loving Spirit," the 4 Lord and the Lifegiver," who has been called by theologians the term of the 1 Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 123. D oO HOLY MATRIMONY Godhead — the personal love of the Father to the Son, and of the Son to the Father, and the Agent for the fulfilment of the designs of that Love in the life called into being by God. The Incarnation of the Eternal Word brought these relations closer to and more vividly before the minds of men. Our Lord taught us to think of our Father which is in heaven, and to understand the dignity and responsibility of fatherhood on earth, just because the earthly father is, so to speak, the shadow of the heavenly, and because all life and all authority which come from a father have their real origin in the one Father. 4 Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven,1 reminds us not that we are to disregard the sacred office or the sacred name in the earthly relation, but that we are to remember why they are so sacred. In the Incarna¬ tion also we learn more deeply the meaning of filial obedience and tenderness, the uniting power of love and sympathy, the sacredness of the office belonging to a son. And this is expanded into its full meaning, or rather the deep meaning of it is made clear to us in a practical way, by the fact that our Lord was born of an earthly mother, and that f He calls her mother, evermore.’ This leads further to a full revelation of the basis of the Christian moral reform. It is always to be remembered that the merely human tie between earth and heaven is not man but woman. This fact — the fact that Mary was Mother of God — at once raised the whole status of woman. It raised it, that is, in posse. Certain principles and MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 51 certain facts came out in Christianity. They did not, as we know, possess mankind as a whole immediately. The teaching of the Truth was like the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump ; it at first affected a narrow circle ; gradually it has affected the world. Woman cannot rise in the scale without man rising also ; and woman gradually rose in dignity by reason of the Providential place assigned to Mary. In the same way the dignity of man was exalted beyond measure by the fact of the manhood of Jesus Christ. Those who do not hold the Catholic Faith as to the Incarnation, lose sight of the real reason of that great reform in human morals which came with Christianity. The moment men began to realise that the Eternal Word had become Perfect Man, that moment they began to learn in a new way the dignity of manhood. The moment they began to realise that He was born of a human mother, and born without the intervention of any human father, that moment they began to feel in a deeper, truer sort the dignity of woman. By the Christian revelation man recovered his sense of God, his sense of his own importance as God's creature, his sense of the importance of human nature, including woman as well as man. A higher moral motive, a higher and fixed moral standard, and a fresh moral power came into human life with the revelation of God made Man, and all that it involves. Then, again, in Christ's action and teaching there was a new impetus given to social morality. The Church was gathered together out of the family of mankind and united with Christ by a special bond undreamt of before. This raised the whole position of marriage. It is Christ's love to His Church, 52 HOLY MATRIMONY and the Church's clinging to Christ, which gives the whole point and basis to the relation of husband and wife. ‘Thus, these duties forming the ground¬ work of natural society have a supernatural motive given to them,' and all the Apostolic injunctions with regard to the married relation arise out of this. The earnest exhortations of the Apostle as to these duties must indeed have produced a sense of startled astonish¬ ment on those who knew the effete society of the time. It was a great moral reform. And then, again, our Lord's actions and His direct teachings bore directly upon the same points. The Church has always felt, for instance, that His presence at the marriage of Cana in Galilee had a special bearing on the Divine teaching of the sanctity of the marriage state. The wonderful miracle performed on that occasion showed indeed the depth and tenderness of His sympathy even with man¬ kind’s lesser anxieties ; but it went further, it exalted the greatness of the occasion as arising from the sacred¬ ness of the marriage bond. Such an event, again, as the raising of the widow's son at Nain has in it a direct teaching of the sacredness of the parental and filial tie ; while such a story as that of the prodigal son, besides its bearing on the deepest and ten derest relations of the soul with God, illustrates as well as exalts the same truth. We know also that our Lord took great pains to correct the abuses of the law of Moses in this matter, and to state the Christian law with emphasis and clearness, as well as to re-state the original law of God. Of this we may speak later, under another head of the question before us ; but it, as well as all the other considerations upon which we have dwelt, reminds MORAL REFORM OF CHRISTIANITY 53 us that the great moral reform which Christianity introduced has its basis in deep and solid truths of man’s nature and God’s nature, and the relation of man to God ; it rests upon no sandy foundation of mere theory. Its immense influence and the benefit of it to mankind are not only in themselves proofs of the truth and the value of the Christian revelation, but they also remind us of the moral dangers that must follow on any tampering with the foundations of the Christian Religion. It required no slight force to attack successfully and overthrow the moral habits which were in possession, and which had on their side, as they have still, the strong and unruly passions of fallen man. A moralist of distinction, by no means disposed to be unduly favourable to the influence of the Church, after noticing the terribly lax notions prevailing in the Empire, speaks as follows : 1 — 6 Against these notions Christianity declared a direct and implacable warfare, which was imperfectly reflected in the civil legislation, but appeared unequivocally in the writings of the Fathers and in most of the decrees of the Councils. It taught as a religious dogma, invariable, inflexible, and independent of all utilitarian calculations, that all forms of intercourse of the sexes, other than life-long unions, were criminal. By teach¬ ing men to regard this doctrine as axiomatic, and therefore inflicting severe social penalties and deep degradation on transient connections, it has profoundly modified even their utilitarian aspect, and has rendered them in most countries furtive and disguised. There is probably no other branch of ethics which has been so largely determined by special dogmatic theology, 1 Lecky, History of European Morals , ii. 371, 372. 54 HOLY MATRIMONY and there is none which would be so deeply affected by its decay/ This is a great testimony to the two facts which have been before us, viz. that in all matters relating to marriage and family life, Christianity meant a great reform ; and the wide-reaching effects of that reform, in the face of the most serious dangers and difficulties, can only be accounted for by its finding its basis in the very nature of God and man and of their relation one to another, i.e. in supernatural religion. CHAPTER VI THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE Marriage is one of those deep and fundamental facts which cannot be ignored at any time in human history. We have seen that it is of the highest importance to realise the sacredness and separateness of each human life. It is also true that this serious thought was much obscured before the coming of Christ, and that Christianity, amongst other benefits which it bestowed upon mankind, brought it vividly into view. But we have also seen that human society never was, and never could be, a mere collection of separate individuals. Each individual starts in life in some necessary relation to others, and each one by his mere existence pre¬ supposes a relation of man to woman. That relation, therefore, lies at the very root of human society ; and that relation, when rightly adjusted, is marriage. There are various aspects of marriage which have been presented to human minds according as men took an imperfect or a more complete view of the subject. (1) Marriage has been viewed merely as a contract. A contract it certainly is, but the claim of Christianity is that it is that, and much more. The Romans, for instance, looked upon marriage, certainly in later times, as a mere contract. They recognised that the consent 55 56 HOLY MATRIMONY of two persons was needed, and their various ceremonies pointed to a solemn contract arising out of that consent. But a contract, if it is nothing more, would of course terminate without any difficulty by mutual consent, as from this it sprang. In any contract there are certain terms and conditions ; these are arranged by the con¬ tracting parties. Such relation as arises out of these, as they have created it, so they can destroy it. There is considerable evidence that this aspect of marriage is a very insufficient one, not merely according to the teaching of Christianity, but before Christianity, according to the witness of the old world; and Christians have strong evidence on their side for that fallen state of man which they believe to be the reason for any contentment with such an insufficient aspect. (2) For a truer aspect of marriage than that of a contract is an estate, or status, or, as we may better call it, a relation. If it is only a contract, as we have seen, and therefore only created by the contracting parties, then, of course, it is easy enough to put it aside. There are those who, arguing from sentiment, in itself not without much truth, have boldly declared in favour of what is called 4 free loved Marriage, they argue, is only real when there is a right affection, and so, if affection dies down, marriage ceases to be. These persons disregard altogether the solemn aspect which marriage has when considered in relation to society, and make it merely into a contract, though a contract arising out of, and depending upon, human affection. In this matter extremes often meet ; and there are those who, valuing the social aspect of marriage, look upon it merely as a contract dependent upon law. The law has in view the existence and wellbeing of society. It VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 57 sanctions the inclinations of affection by the bonds of law : according to this view, as law creates marriage, so at any time it can bring it to an end. This was very much the view among the Romans, to which we have referred. There is a certain truth in both these views, and a certain amount of falsehood. It is true that there ought to be mutual affection leading to marriage. It is also true that in all properly organised societies of civilised beings law should come in to sanction marriage. But neither affection nor law creates marriage. Marriage is a relation. To enter into it, men and women ought to have right affections, and they ought to have the sanction and protection of law ; but they enter into it, because it is a relation of a serious and solemn kind, and not merely a contract, to be made or ended by either sentiment or law. How deeply this has been felt in human nature, even before the Christian revelation, is witnessed to by some of the greatest masterpieces of Greek genius. No people, it has been truly said, would appear at first sight to be likely to be more opposed to any restraints upon human taste and human appetite than the Greeks; because among them, individualism reigned triumphant both in art and literature, and both these were impregnated with the highest conceptions of sensuous beauty. This temper, as we have seen, greatly affected Greek society in the age of Pericles and later in a sense adverse to marriage. None the less, it has been truly observed that no people have witnessed more strongly to marriage being a necessary relation than they. The whole story of the Iliad had sunk deeply into the minds of the Greeks. It represented to them the enduring conflict between liberty and tyranny ; 58 HOLY MATRIMONY between their own ideas of freedom and civilisation and the ideas which created and governed the monarchies of Asia. And this great poem, amidst its many teachings, teaches few things more impressively than their solemn sense of the sacredness of marriage. Their tribes in the past undertook the great enterprise of the Trojan war, and stood together in that undertaking in defence of the marriage vow. It shows us that, whatever evil deeds it may attribute to its heroes, marriage was looked upon as a most sacred relation. 4 No poem in the world, ’ it has been truly said, 4 does so much homage to the hearth and the home, and especially to wives, as this poem. Amidst the clatter of spear and shields, in the Greek ships or the Trojan city, they are never forgotten. The reader is impressed before he is aware of it with the conviction that the Greek manners must have been mainly created by the conjugal relation, and that the weakness and corruption of manners may be mainly traced to the violation of it." 1 The same thing is true of the Odyssey . Whatever were the vicissitudes, whatever the varying moods of the hero, he had always before him that to which he was looking during his long wanderings — the return to the home and the wife. And this is a real witness to the truth that the Greeks felt the seriousness and depth of that relation, and that upon this feeling their society was founded. With them, decay set in when this high feeling was shaken. Nothing can warn us more than this of the immense importance to the welfare of mankind of the recognition of marriage as a relation. And it is much to be noted that this sense lived on in the Greek mind with a marvellous intensity, 1 Maurice, Social Morality , p. 54. VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 59 when many things were occurring not unlikely to shake it. The strong artistic temper of the Greeks led them naturally to lay much stress on individualism, on taste, on sentiment. It has been truly enough observed that the aesthetic faculties may work dangerously against moral considerations. Yet the Greek tragedies, in an age when taste and choice and individualism prevailed, were still founded on a strong sense of the sanctity of the marriage bond ; it has been said truly of the Agamemnon of dGschylus : 4 It is the tragedy of the broken relation, of the vengeance on the husband, of the vengeance on the adulterers, of the furies that tormented the matricide, which appealed to the Greek mind and conscience." 1 When the Greeks began to look upon marriage as a mere matter of law, instead of a solemn relation, older and lying deeper than law, and itself sustaining law, — then the morality of the nation began to decline, just as we may observe in our own times, when the same sort of corrupting view of marriage has crept into men’s minds. There is no doubt that this sense of a relation into which men and women entered, which they did not create, haunted the mind and conscience of the ancient world. The Christian can, of course, account for the fact of the decay of this sense and for the consequent evils, because he believes that the Fall of man is a truth, not only witnessed to by revelation, but evident enough to all observers. Some philosophers have believed in the steady progress of the race, and have denied the doctrine, or rather we should say the fact, of the Fall. That there has been progress, no one will deny ; and especially the Christian believes that there 1 Maurice, Social Morality , p. 56. 60 HOLY MATRIMONY has been wonderful progress since Christ came, owing to the new forces which He placed at the disposal of mankind. But progress has been so intermittent, and there have been such terrible lapses, and such corrup¬ tions, that it is impossible, in view of facts, to deny the fallen condition of the race. (3) Looking at the matter according to the Christian revelation, a true aspect of marriage is that 4 in the time of man’s innocency ’ this relation was divinely instituted. We have our Lord’s authority for saying that that relation implied the closest union ; that 6 they twain should be one flesh.’ Before the Fall, this institution was given to those who were in 4 original righteousness ; ’ they were clothed, that is, with a robe of righteousness, and the forfeiture of that robe of righteousness is what is called 4 original sin.’ Before that forfeiture, they were in a condition to recognise and use rightly the relation of marriage, according to the Divine intention, although they were in some respects less favoured than the children of the Christian dispensation, as to them was not given the indwelling Spirit in the same way that He is given to those whose bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. In the long centuries between the Fall of man and the coming of Christ, we find no change made in the fundamental truth as to the Divine institution. Things, however, had greatly changed ; degradation and corruption had come on the human race ; there was alienation from God ; but still, as we have seen, here and there the sense of that relation which was divinely instituted was in the minds of men. Amongst the chosen people, the legislation of Moses was intended to raise the standard. He found things in such a con- VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 61 dition that the relation of marriage was treated with the greatest laxity. Husbands put away their wives on the most trivial grounds and from mere caprice. In the Mosaic legislation this was checked ; for any putting away, the husband was compelled to have a document legally attested before a high authority. Adultery was looked upon as so dreadful that to it was affixed the death-penalty ; and no putting away was permitted except for 4 some uncleanness,1 or 4 the shame of the thing,1 which probably included 4 grave cases of immodesty and indecent conduct, and also such . . . defilement ... as by the Levitical law rendered a person 44 unclean.11 1 Mosaic legislation, therefore, raised the whole question to a higher level. Polygamy, indeed, was permitted under certain restrictions, but re-marriage after divorce was discountenanced in the strongest possible manner.1 Whatever allowances were made for separation in regard to marriage at all, were made because of the 4 hardness of their hearts,1 to a people who had not yet received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is given to Christians, and were only just emerging gradually from idolatry. As time went on, there came a relaxing of the Mosaic law, and the sophistries of the Rabbis, especially of the laxer school, greatly shook the true view of marriage as a permanent and solemn relation. This, amongst other things, our Lord set Himself to correct ; but of this we must speak again. (4) The aspect of marriage under the light of Christianity is the truest and the most complete. It is recognised in the Christian Church as fundamentally a relation, as divinely instituted, as, of course, implying a 1 See chap. viii. p. 8i inf. and note. 62 HOLY MATRIMONY contract, but as something higher and more serious still. For Christian men and Christian women have become 4 members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of _ y the kingdom of heaven.’ They are in many senses different ; they are on a higher level ; they have greater gifts ; they have deeper responsibilities than those who are not in the Christian covenant. Their marriage is especially, according to the teaching of our Lord, a reverting to marriage as originally instituted, in which there must be indissolubility and the mutual faithful¬ ness of two persons ; but also it rises to a higher level. ‘These being members of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit, when they are united in marriage, not merely remain each blest by the Spirit as before the marriage ; but the grace of the indwelling Spirit, working through the Divine institution of marriage, makes the marriage union to be a deeper, more intense, more mysterious interpenetration of being than it had been even in Paradise.1 Further, it is a mysterious expression and symbol in the outer world of the close and mystical union betwixt Christ and His Church. Further, marriage has been looked upon in the Christian Church as a Sacrament. The word sacrament is used, of course, in a very wide, as in a narrower sense. In a wide sense this world is sacramental ; God is ever working through outward means to convey unseen power. Being ourselves creatures of a composite nature, having bodies as well as souls, it is in accordance with analogy and right reason that we should be dealt with accordingly, by outward signs with inward grace. In a narrower sense, in the Divine economy with regard to the Church, seven Sacraments have been considered as special channels of Divine gifts through outward signs. VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 63 Of these, two are of transcendent importance, that is, Holy Baptism and the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. These two are 4 generally1 (that is, universally) 4 necessary to salvation,1 where they may be had. The remaining five have each their own special importance ; of these Holy Marriage is considered one. It has risen to this dignity through the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. Our Lord did not leave on record in the New Testament the actual form or manner of administration of this or the other four (and as we may call them) lesser Sacraments ; but as He guided His Apostles into all truth, we know that the Church’s mind on these subjects represents the mind of Christ, We may look upon Holy Matrimony, therefore, as a Sacrament instituted by our Lord to restore and raise to the highest power the original Divine institution, to give power to men and women who enter into this relation to sanctify it perfectly, to realise the depth and mystery of the bond that unites them in every part of their being, 4 to bring up their children in a Christian manner, if God give them children, and to represent to the world the union of Christ and His Church. Here there is, of course, a visible sign and an inward grace, and an institution for a special purpose, coming from the mind of Christ.1 It may be permitted, perhaps, to quote here my own conclusions on certain details of this sacramental aspect of Marriage, written elsewhere : — 4 Theologians represent Sacraments as possessing what is called matter and form. 4(1) The matter of the Sacrament of Holy Marriage has been believed to be found in the mutual consent or contract by which those who are being married give to G4 HOLY MATRIMONY one another power, each over the other ; and it has been justly noticed that this itself points to the dignity of this Sacrament ; for whilst in Baptism the matter is the ordinary creature of water, here it is found in the living temples of the Holy Ghost and in the members of Christ Himself. 4 (2) The form of the Sacrament is found in the words and signs authorised from time to time in the Church, by which the persons being married express their consent. It has always been held that this consent must have some distinct and recognised expression, and must refer not to some future, but to some present time, and must express the consent of both parties. This consent has been usually given by expression in words, and by the joining of hands; and in our own Church, as in other parts of the Church, there has usually been the giving and receiving of a ring as an appropriate and expressive ceremony, though such a ceremony would, of course, not be essential to the form of the Sacrament, although necessary to its regularity in our own Church. 4 (3) The ministers of this Sacrament are the two persons who are being married, who administer it in the valid manner before proper and appointed witnesses. The appointed witness, according to the mind of the Catholic Church, is a priest of the Church, who is also empowered to give the Church’s blessing to those who enter into this sacred relation. Marriage, therefore, solemnised in a registrar’s office between persons against whose marriage there is no canonical bar, is recognised by the Church as a valid Sacrament of Marriage, although certainly irregular, and not to be encouraged, as likely to be wanting in some blessing % VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 65 through the want of respect shown to the mind of the Church. 6 (4) The effects of the Sacrament of Marriage properly entered into are to produce its sacramental graces : the grace of faithfulness, and therefore of deepening affection ; the grace of assistance in the Christian education of children ; and the grace of indissolubility. These graces are God's especial gifts to those who are married, to enable fallen human nature to rise in this respect to His purposes. The first of all duties in a Christian marriage is, of course, faithfulness. The husband and the wife have each given to the other a power which must never be violated. “ They two,” our Lord says, 66 shall be one flesh ” ; and the Apostle accordingly distinctly teaches that u the wife has not power over her own body, but the husband ; and likewise the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife.” Faithfulness to this great obligation is due from each to the other. The blessing of the Sacrament is to enable the fulfilment of this by ennobling and strengthening natural love, and by changing it to a pure and supernatural affection like that of our Lord Jesus Christ to His Church. When the grace of marriage is rightly received and rightly used, what might otherwise be a yoke becomes a bond that is valued and loved ; and turns the cares and anxieties which necessarily must come in married life into happiness and blessings which only deepen and strengthen affection. To fallen human nature, there is a natural inclination to inconstancy, “ never remaining in one stay,” and there are the trials which come from the changes and chances of this mortal life ; and by the special grace of God in marriage there comes strength E 06 HOLY MATRIMONY to bear such, and readiness in excusing mutually the faults and defects of imperfect creatures, and of holding as sacred beyond all possibility of discussion, or even thought, the solemn promises made at the foot of the Altar. 4 Thus, when we hear statements made ... as to the impossibility of lasting fidelity between one woman and one man, we have to remember that such state¬ ments are made without reckoning with a fact of the first importance, viz. a special gift of the sanctifying grace of God which is offered in the Sacrament of Marriage. From this grace, faithfully used, there come the recognition and acceptance of all sorts of little duties belonging to those who are married, such as gentleness, respect, and care on the side of the man, and the duty of taking pains to provide for the material wants of his family, and to rule and guide that family with wise Christian authority, and not a mere tyrannical dominion ; and such duties on the part of a wife as obedience and respect, gentleness and modesty, and diligence in guiding the affairs of her household in a fitting manner. To develop the grace of marriage, a Christian husband and wife must, of course, be faithful to the duty of prayer. 4 And then, again, it is the grace of marriage when well received and used that causes the disposition to look upon the gift of children as a real blessing ; and by this, many mothers might be saved from those sinful and corrupt thoughts and actions which have disgraced even our own Christian times. It is by the grace of God that a Christian mother learns to feel that if the birth of her children gives her suffering, and a Christian father learns to feel that if the existence of his children VARIOUS ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE 67 brings him an added weight of care, yet by the use of that grace they become to both a special blessing. Indeed, S. Paul’s statement with reference to the Christian mother and the birth of her children seems to point in some way to an especial blessing to the mother who bears children. It may mean, of course, what is stated in our translation, but it may also mean, and has been thought by some teachers at least to include : a) 44 She shall be saved by the Child-bearing,” i.e. by Blessed Mary having borne the Eternal Word; and (£) 44 she shall be saved by bringing children into the world,” i.e. that her sanctification is perfected through the right use of the grace of marriage, which enables her to be a loyal wife and mother. 4 And then, again, there is, of course, the duty resting upon both parents of bringing up children as faithful Christians and as good men and women ; the grace of marriage enabling this to be done. Fathers ought especially to remember that they are not freed from this obligation by being bound by other obligations of a more public character. Whilst it is true that the mother has her own especial duties in this regard, especially in the early years of childhood, when she is, above all, the representative of the Church to the child, and is the chief power for laying the foundation of holy principles in the soul ; still, fathers are far too apt to forget, and very wrongly, that they have their share of duty. As their children are growing older, no one perhaps can take their place, especially in the care of their boys, in guiding the young soul through the critical years of the greatest of changes — except the change of death — the change from youth to manhood.’ 1 1 The Perfect Life , pp. 323-327. G8 HOLY MATRIMONY This is the ideal. In fact, through death or through the misconduct of parents, charity and affection have had to supply others to take their place. In many a case these have been as true as, or truer than those of nature’s appointment, in fulfilling the duties of father or mother. When this is the case, it is still because of their high sense of the sacredness of all relations involved in that of the marriage bond. CHAPTER VII THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE — BAPTISM, UNITY, CONSENT, UNION Serious and important as marriage always and every¬ where has been, there are special characteristics belong¬ ing to it in the Christian dispensation. From the Fall of man there had been an estrangement from his Creator. In the mystery of God's Providence, it was ordained that 4 the middle wall of partition 1 should be 4 broken down 1 in Christ. By the Incarnation, mankind was brought into a close relation with God ; the benefits of the Incarnation were to be applied to each single soul, one by one. Being baptized into Christ, each soul 4 put on Christ 1 ; God the Holy Spirit came and dwelt in those who were made, by Baptism, 4 members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.' Man thus became in a state of grace, and so had power to go on to higher things. In Confirmation he received fuller gifts of the indwelling Spirit, and in Holy Communion he received the Body and Blood of Christ, to 4 the strengthening and refreshing of his soul,’ and to cleanse his body by Christ's sacred Body and wash his soul by the precious Blood. Man's relation to God was thus entirely G9 70 HOLY MATRIMONY changed in the Christian covenant. When, therefore, according to God's intention and ordinance, a Christian man becomes united in marriage with a Christian woman, this relation is correspondingly exalted. If certain licence had been accorded for a time — as it had — in cases of marriage before Christ came, all this is wholly changed since the Incarnation. (1) Christian marriage as an essential condition, therefore, is Holy. It is a holy relation, because it is a relation accord¬ ing to God's ordinance. It goes back to the original intention of the Creator, and with certain added powers. In the account of the Divine institution of Marriage, God Himself condescended to take part in the character of Father. He brought Eve to Adam. Thereby was marked the holiness of the relation. But besides that, under the Christian dispensation, it is holy, because married persons possess in themselves the ‘ powers of the world to come,' being each of them a temple of the Holy Ghost, so as to make their union holy. It has been truly said : 4 In this holy estate . . . there is a marvellous oneness of holy life, a sense of mutual yearning, mysteriously satisfied in a peacefulness of mutual possession, an interpenetration of the life of each in that of the other, all, in fact, which is implied in that /xey a /juvaT^piov, that mighty mystery, which no man will ever comprehend in all the depths of its far-reaching sympathies, but which is as much the heritage of high Christian union to-day as it was in the time of the Apostles. It is a union like the union of Christ with His Church. It is holy ground.' The first characteristic of Christian marriage then is, that it is holy. Closely connected with this essential characteristic is ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 71 the fact that for a marriage to be a holy marriage, each of those persons who marry must have received the Sacrament of Baptism. This, indeed, is obviously so, as unbaptized persons are not members of the Christian Church, and the testimony of Christian writers is distinct on the subject. Closely connected with this also is the custom of the benediction of married persons, so general in the Christian Church. The blessing of the priest is not, of course, essential to the validity of Christian marriage, although ‘the common sentiment in many parts of Christendom has adopted the1 opposite 4 conclusion.1 The benediction is a beautiful ceremony pointing to the holiness of marriage. Even above the mutual consent of the parties 4 rises the sense of the hallowing which goes forth in marriage to members of Christ’s Body ; and this seems to find its utterance in the words of blessing and the uplifted hand of the Christian priest, who stands over the pair as they bow before him and joins them together with the authority of God.1 An authoritative blessing is always a blessed thing to those who receive it rightly, and in this case it is of particular solemnity, not because it is essential to the validity of marriage, but because it bears witness to the holiness of this relation between Christian man and woman. Then (2) another essential characteristic of Christian marriage is its unity or exclusiveness. The marriage bond by Divine institution, and according to Christi¬ anity, which reaffirmed the Divine institution, is the bond between one man and one woman. This is expressed in the solemn words, recorded in the marriage of the first Adam, and repeated by the second Adam 72 HOLY MATRIMONY 4 they twain shall be one flesh.’ No religion with any really Divine sanction about it at all has ever permitted one wife to have more than one husband. Polyandry, as it is called, however, has been undoubtedly one of those forms of corruption in fallen human nature which has prevailed more or less among various peoples, and at different times, but not among those to whom any true, even though partial, revelation had come. As to Polygamy, that is quite another matter : in this direction there was a falling away from the original institution in patriarchal times. According to the Mosaic law, it was permitted and sometimes practised amongst the Hebrew people. It seems to have been one of those things which were allowed because of the ‘ hardness of their hearts.’ It must be remembered that in the older dispensation human nature had neither the light nor the power which was brought to it by Christ. He who was the Light of the world enabled men to see the true sacredness of marriage ; and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and by the Sacraments, He brought power for men to rule themselves accord¬ ing to God’s law. It is a curious and interesting fact that in spite of the terrible corruptions which marked Roman society there was no permission of polygamy in Roman law. The early Christian Church was never confronted, therefore, with the question of polygamy at all. It was continually coming into contact with the Empire as to questions of divorce, but it had not to fight any law which permitted a man to have more than one wife. That the Church always felt the unity or exclusive¬ ness of marriage is an indisputable fact ; and nothing brings it more vividly before the mind than the strong, ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 73 and, as we should think, excessive statements, in opposi¬ tion to second marriages. Christianity meant to teach that the union of man and woman was to be a union in every department of two personal lives. The Divine intention had been announced at the time of the original institution ; that intention had been departed from through the corruption of human nature, even among the chosen people ; and our Lord in introducing the great reform of Christianity, re-instituted the original Divine ordinance, that one man and one woman should be husband and wife ; that 4 they twain 1 should be 4 one flesh.’ (3) And a further essential characteristic of Holy Marriage is mutual consent , and the union of two lives. In the Roman law, marriage had been looked upon, as we have seen, as a contract ; but the essential point of contract, as viewed by that law, was mutual consent. It has been a principle of Christianity, as shown in the teaching and actions of our Lord Himself, to take common things, and use them for higher purposes. Thus water, one of the commonest of the ordinary elements, was raised to a sacred purpose in Holy Baptism ; and bread and wine were made by His appointment the means of conveying His own sacred Body and Blood ; and the ordinary paternal action of laying-on of hands, to signify blessing, or commenda¬ tion, or parental affection, became the outward sign of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, in the Sacraments of Ordination and Confirmation. According to the same kind of principle, the Christian Church seems to have taken Roman customs and Roman law, so far as they were in accordance with Christian revelation, and adopted them and used them. The Roman law was 74 HOLY MATRIMONY very insistent upon the necessity of mutual consent. The feeling of the Church, however, on the necessity of consent lay deeper than this ; its foundations were laid in conclusions from Divine revelation. In the original institution, Christians, of course, felt that when God brought Eve to Adam, the consent of the two was implicitly understood. God, making His creatures after His own image, endowed them with freewill ; and in this first true act of marriage there was implied the consent of both, of which God Himself deigned to be the witness and minister. It has been said, and truly, that it might have pleased God to withdraw any sensible sign of His presence, but that such was not the case. He Himself presented the woman to the man, not only to teach, as we have seen, the holiness of marriage, but also, and above all, to show the need of free consent, on the part of those married, to the sacred contract. It has therefore always been held by the Christian Church that one of the essential charac¬ teristics of true marriage is mutual consent. The great difference between the Roman laws and customs and the Christian is, that the Romans looked upon it only as a contract, whilst the Christian Church looked upon it as a Divine contract, with a super¬ natural and sacramental character. That which is only a human contract, resting upon merely mutual consent, can, of course, by mutual consent be cancelled. That which is also Divine and Sacramental means a great deal more. In it, one of the parties in the contract is Almighty God, and He, as we shall see, can dissolve it by death, without which it cannot be dissolved. It has been necessary, of course, for the sake of society, that this contract should be solemnly ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 75 affirmed and witnessed to, in properly regulated form. The method of giving effect to this affirmation and witness has been various at different times. In early days the marriage of Christians — as regards regulated witness — was very much the same as Roman marriage with the introduction of a Christian benediction, and it took place at first in private houses, and only after¬ wards in the church. It has been necessary to take care in different ways, in various civilised countries, that there should be proper and undoubted testimony, as far as possible, to the fulfilment of the essential conditions. The consequence has been a variety of ceremonies of marriage ; but under the Christian dis¬ pensation, the administrators of the Sacrament would appear to be the man and woman themselves when giving their consent publicly, and before properlv appointed witnesses. The benediction of the priest is, as we have seen, not essential ; although in Christians, who are properly instructed, it is an irregular act, and one wanting in right reverence for the Church’s regula- o o o tions and teachings, to forgo that benediction. (4) It is also an essential characteristic of marriage, that besides the consent given, there should be a real union of life to be fully carried out in the holy relation entered into. This union is, as we have seen, so close as to be the chosen representative in the world of 6 the mystical union betwixt Christ and His Church.’ It is intended to be a union of will and affections, of heart and body, the closest that it is possible to imagine. In order that this may be perfectly according to God’s will, the grace of Baptism is revived, and further grace is given for an entire fulfilment of duty, in the Sacra¬ ment of Marriage itself. 70 HOLY MATRIMONY These, then, are the important, and indeed essential characteristics of Christian marriage. It is holy, because it is according to Divine appointment, and meant to subserve Divine ends, for the birth of children to be brought up in the faith and fear of God, and because if rightly used, it is the means to the sanctification of two souls and the growth of two characters. It implies that the Sacrament of Baptism has been received by both persons, so that both are 4 members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven."’ It is exclusive, because it can only be between one man and one woman. It is an act of the mutual consent of responsible wills, made in God's presence and witnessed to by competent and appointed witnesses ; it is a means of the union of two personal lives, body and soul, in the most intimate union conceivable. It is therefore a very sacred and solemn relation, and not a mere contract, into which one man enters with one woman, and one woman with one man, and that under the highest sanctions, and as one of the greatest blessings, and most helpful of Divine gifts to human nature. Such are some of the essential conditions and characteristics of Christian marriage. There is, however, another of the gravest significance, which we must consider in the following chapters. CHAPTER VIII THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE — INDISSOLUBILITY I. Another essential characteristic of Holy Matrimony is that it is indissoluble. According to Christian teaching, there is but one cause that can break the bond of marriage — that is, death. It is God who fixes the term of our life on earth ; it is He under whose government, by whatever means, death comes to each of us. The sin of suicide, for instance, consists in man’s venturing to take this prerogative of God into his own hands. Capital punishment, and the final arbitraments of war, are justifiable only because they are carried out by those who are supposed at the time to have God's authority. Life and death therefore are in God's hands. In the same way, the mystery of marriage, which is so closely connected with the mystery of life, is the entering into a serious relation under Divine sanction. In that relation, it is God who ‘joins together' the man and the woman, and it is He alone who can ‘put them asunder’ as regards that relation by the death of either, according to Llis appointment. A holy marriage, therefore, according to the teaching of the Christian revelation, cannot be dissolved except 77 78 HOLY MATRIMONY by death. In other words, there is no such thing as divorce, in its proper sense, i.e. the final severance of the marriage bond, known to Christianity. As for many reasons, on which we need not dwell at present, this position has been assailed ; and as practically, to an unfortunate extent, in modern times, Christian teaching on the subject has been disregarded by human law, it is necessary to remember the reasons put forward by serious teachers, who have carefully examined the question, for maintaining the teaching of Christianity. But before doing so, it ought to be observed that if marriage can be dissolved for any cause short of death, the essential character of Christian marriage is completely changed ; it is no longer a recurrence to the original Divine ordinance ; it is no longer a deep and Divine mystery ; it is no longer an image of the union of Christ with His Church ; it is no longer a real union at all, but a contract, which may be annulled under certain circumstances. In other words, if it be not indissoluble, marriage is a totally different thing from what it has been widely held to be since the Incarnation. The indissolubility, or dissolubility, therefore, of marriage is a vital question. According to the answer given, we have — Either a Divine and mysterious union, 4 which naught on earth can break ’ ; Or a contract which can easily be broken according to varying laws. In other words, there is such a thing as Holy Matrimony, or there is nothing of the kind. All who examine the subject have to look first at the teaching of Holy Scripture. ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 79 I (1) As far as early Revelation goes, it would appear that from the necessity of the case marriages between those who are close in kinship were permitted, which afterwards, not only in accordance with Divine precept, but also in accordance with the law of God as revealed in natural causes and effects, have ever been forbidden. But, putting aside all such exceptional conditions, we know that when the Divine law of marriage was announced, it included the exclusive union of one man with one woman, and indissolubility, except by death. To this, as we know, our Lord Himself refers back, and therefore it is true to say : 4 If there be anything plain in the Gospels, this is so ; that the first institution of marriage is identical with the Christian institution. . . . Unquestionably,"’ our Lord 4 meant that the words of the law made in Paradise should sink deeply into the hearts of His people, and should be accepted as the standard and measure of all their opinions and proceedings relating to marriage.’ (2) After the Fall, mankind became corrupt ; and, above all, in respect of such matters as that before us, polygamy was contrary to the original law of marriage. It took place, however, as a concession to human weak¬ ness, permitted on account of the hardness of men’s hearts — 7 rpo? aic\r)poKaphlav. 4 The old law dealt with polygamy and divorce alike.’ And it has been justly argued that there is more to be said from Old Testa¬ ment teaching for polygamy than there is for divorce ; but no one pretends that polygamy can claim any sanction whatever from Christianity. Indeed, neither of these departures from the Divine institution was 80 HOLY MATRIMONY instituted by the Mosaic Law. That law was a great reform. It found polygamy and divorce in posses¬ sion, according to long established and corrupt custom. Moses did not attempt to suppress either of these customs, but he did restrain and amend them, and put them within strict limitations. As regards divorce, it was henceforth to be granted only under careful legal forms, and for a definite cause. No encouragement was given to it. And in the prophecy of Malachi, amongst the latest utterances of the Old Dispensation, it was taught, 4 1 hate putting away, saith the Lord, the God of Israel.' 1 Besides this, in the Old Testa¬ ment generally, it has been truly argued that the Divine meaning as to marriage has been wonderfully brought out by the fact that God's relation to His people, and the relation of His people to God, is con¬ stantly compared to marriage, to a marriage too which excludes all other ties of the kind, which is lasting and cannot be dissolved, and that to the breach of such ties, and to the having many lovers, apostasy and unfaith¬ fulness to God are also constantly compared. It is an argument of real force to say that any one whose mind and heart were deeply imbued with the teach¬ ings of the ancient Scriptures on the subject would naturally come to Christianity, with the expectation of finding marriage treated there as a very high and holy thing, and as a bond that could not be dissolved for any reason whatever ; that in this way those Scriptures would naturally act as a schoolmaster to bring him to Christ; and that he would naturally be much disappointed if he were to find in Christianity — in which power is promised and given to counteract 1 Mai. ii. 1 6, R.V. ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 81 the old hardness of heart — that such concessions as were allowed for the time under the Old Law could possibly be permitted. From the study of the Old Testament, therefore, we are led to the conclusion that the original institution of indissoluble marriage is the only Divine one ; that anything to the contrary was a mere concession, because of human corruption, to be entirely withdrawn when the Incarnation of the Eternal Word brought 4 the powers of the world to come1 into human nature, so enabling it, if it would, to fulfil God’s law.1 II The most important testimony of Holy Scripture will, of course, be found in the utterances of our Lord. But before we proceed to examine them, or any other passage of the New Testament, it will be well to remember the following important point. The real question is, as to the re-marriage of separated persons. No one denies that there may arise such painful 1 It is to be noted that Deut. xxiv. 1-4 only refers to, and does not expressly sanction, re-marriage in the contemplated case. The translation in the Authorised Version (which is not corrected in the Revised Version) may give an impression to the English reader that re-marriage was expressly sanctioned. This translation is pro¬ nounced by learned authorities to be incorrect. See, e.g., Driver ( International Critical Commentary) in loco. Further, it is to be noted that in cases where re-marriage has taken place, the woman is said to have been ‘defiled.’ I believe that the same Hebrew word is used for adultery in Lev. xviii. 20 ; Num. v. 13, 14, 20, and its ordinary meaning has to do with pollution. It seems evident that this very restricted allowance, with the description of the re-marriage as if it were adultery, was, as our Lord says, ‘for the hardness of your hearts ’ — irpos