The Hearth Stone Part 4

If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put down by a.n.a.lysis and experience, than the sentimentalist's notion, that the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most of the spontaneous play of genius--those which rejoice in poetry, music, and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear, that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left to itself. No--our principles have vast power over our feelings, and they who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of the very trellis which overlooks it.

The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.

Manners are but lesser morals, and closely connected with the greater morals. Good manners begin at home, and if they do not begin there, the desire for them is apt to end in poor affectation. The soul of politeness is mutual deference, and where should this have its origin but in the respect most directly sanctioned by G.o.d? Too often the true filial honor is forgotten, and, perhaps, from thoughtlessness more than disrespect, children are sometimes seen usurping the prerogatives of age, speaking in tones of petulant authority, and crowding themselves into the places of elders. The best place for them is their own place. Their own dignity, as well as that of their parents, is best furthered by the deference, that gives the household its best order and makes it the school of the graces, that adorn society with its pleasing gradations, and cheer the way to its best virtues. Full enough is the temptation, especially in cities, to fall short of this true deference and to rob childhood and youth of their best character. Manners, instead of being nurtured on the Christian root, are left too much to the dancing-master, and there are hosts of boys and girls adept in postures and airs proper for the ballet, and strangers to the reverence and simplicity that most honor them in honoring their elders. Precocious pa.s.sion for dress and society is the bane of the one, and ridiculous affectation of manhood, especially of its follies, is the shame of the other. The girl, instead of being calmly at rest in a child's healthful slumber, is aping the belle in the ball-room; and the boy is walking the street with his cigar, perhaps boasting of his powers at the bottle, instead of being where he should be, in his bed, getting strength for true manliness, not fevering himself into a ludicrous manikin. "Learn to show piety at home," is thus another form of the ancient law, "Honor thy father and thy mother."

The sentiment so essential to good manners will show itself as a rule of conduct, and filial honor will take the form of obedience. During the years of dependence this obedience is to be entire, for the parent must think and act for the child. No matter what precocity of memory or imagination, what privileges of education or amount of attainments, may seem sometimes to reverse the order of precedence, the child is to follow the parent's counsels, and in so doing will gain alike in wisdom and discipline, for the experience of age is wiser than the pert wit of youth, and submission to a superior will is essential to a true schooling for the vicissitudes of life. It is not well to overstrain prerogative, and to insist on obedience as a sacrifice, where it might be made an attraction, if the reasons of the case are fully set forth. Nor is it well to make obedience wholly dependent upon a statement of reasons, for many things must be done for reasons that youth cannot appreciate, and kindness is never so decided as when the impatient shortsightedness of childhood is overruled by the far-seeing wisdom of maturity. Reason there should be in every request; but if the request were allowed to wait until the reasons could be understood, parental care would cease with the first restraint, and childhood would be left to itself at the first task or pain. G.o.d himself is our helper here, for he, who calls us in so many things to walk by faith without sight, has fitted youth for the same discipline, and made mild authority in the end more attractive and efficient than premature argument or feeble flattery.

Obedience, thus considered, will not be servile but filial, and will find its own honor in doing honor to its guardians. It will lead children to ask constantly what they can do for the happiness of the family and the welfare of its members. This duty is too little thought of, especially where there is none of that pressure of want which compels children to help in the maintenance of the family. No matter how great the wealth of parents or the retinue of servants on the watch for every care, there is still place for the earnest co-operation of each member of the family, and no refinements of living have abolished the duty of mutual help, and the grace of mutual deference. In most families the services of the children are needed for many friendly offices of greater or less importance, and none will deny that the comfort of every household is closely connected with what the children do or fail to do for its welfare. So early does the work, the responsible work of life begin, and so early may its springs of beneficence be opened.

Let any true household ill.u.s.trate what we mean. What beauty in the filial confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that lighten a father or mother's care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! What power over the pains of sickness, or the languor of convalescence, in the solicitude and consideration which children may show, and showing, may bring to the weary pillow a balm more healing than medical art! And if stinted means require frugal expenditures, or even the active labor of the young, what worth in the filial thoughtfulness that antic.i.p.ates the necessary economy, instead of repining encourages frugality, and asks to be useful instead of insisting on being indulged.

And when fortune, station, or intellectual eminence reward youthful aspiration, the aspirant never wins more respect than when he makes his parents his confidants and companions. Here our common nature is not at fault, for whenever in any public exercise or examination a young person does remarkably well, we all think at once of the parents, and the pleasure of the a.s.sembly is not complete until the people have confirmed their own enjoyment by sympathy with the father and mother. There is great power in this fact, and what it implies--great power in the fact that children honor parents by being truly honorable, and repay best the sacrifices of so many anxious years by making their own lives a credit and comfort to father and mother. This benefit lasts as long as life itself, and the integrity and efficiency of mature years carries out to the limit of existence the affectionate reverence of childhood.

Here the whole world is one, and the human heart is the same in all ages, and history and experience meet. What state of society can be blind to the meaning of the imprecation which was p.r.o.nounced at the entrance into the promised land, and joined in the same doom the idolator and him who should "set light by his father and mother?" What philosophy can gainsay the sage of the Book of Proverbs, whose sententious moralizing rises into prophetic grandeur as he speaks of the unnatural son: "The eye that mocketh at his father or refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." Who needs any interpretation of the feelings of David, or Joseph, or Solomon, in their joy or trial?

How heartrending was the grief of the Psalmist over his recreant son--"Would to G.o.d, I had died for thee, my son, my son!" What beauty, as well as simplicity in the inquiry of Joseph for his father, when the prime minister of Egypt dismissed his courtly train, and weeping aloud, could only ask "Doth my father yet live?" What grandeur far above its gold and gems surrounded the throne of Solomon, when he rose to meet his mother, and called her to a seat at his right hand. "And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother, for I will not say thee nay." What pathos and sublimity in the Saviour of men, when, embracing home and heaven in his parting words on the Cross, he commended his spirit to the Eternal Father, and intrusted his mother to the beloved disciple's care. We need no more than this to show how the gospel glorifies the law, and crowns its morality and piety alike in its perfect love--"Woman, behold thy son"--"Disciple, behold thy mother."

Hear the amen that goes from Calvary to Sinai--and Honor thy father and thy mother!

Brothers and Sisters.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

When Cain asked "Am I my brother's keeper?" it seemed a very strange question to come from a man who had just murdered his brother and held him so cruelly in his keeping. Fear led Cain to disguise his guilt by repudiating his obligation, through an interrogation more negative than a flat denial. What he said in guilty fear, many are now ready to say in pretended humanity, and it is one of the conceits of our time to make light of ties of kindred in the name of a world-wide philanthropy. A melo-dramatic patriotism not particularly famous for domestic attachment has been ready to swear brotherhood to the whole nation, perhaps the whole race, and many a scape-grace who has been a sad plague to his own kindred, has been heard shouting at the top of his voice the three n.o.ble watchwords of which fraternity is a climax. Philanthropists sometimes labor under a similar error, and people who have had no especial solicitude or felicity in helping their own families and neighbors, presume to despise such near at hand interests as trivial, and seek to reform the world in a wholesale way. Professed Christians are not wholly free from the error. Some certainly there are who are ready to _brother_ and _sister_ all Christendom with most profuse generosity of tongue, who show their little sense of the meaning of the term by pinching selfishness towards those of their own blood, that seems to say, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

It is well, that large views of social obligation are making headway, and that Christianity has so mightily rebuked the narrowness of exclusive cliques and clans.h.i.+ps. But if humanity is to be true in its progress, it must be true in its source; and if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love not merely G.o.d whom he hath not seen, but the brother whom he hath not seen? In fact what is regard for our brother but the first and most obvious application of the second of the two great commandments? Our brother is our next neighbor, and even our humanity must begin with him, that it may be really worth any thing. We turn now to the collateral relations of the household, or the duties of brothers and sisters. Sacred and suggestive subject, speaking to each of us in the tones of our own peculiar experience. Let it speak to the conscience as well as to the sensibilities and the memory.

Where shall we begin but at the beginning, that is with the will of G.o.d, which is the ground of every duty? The family, as we have seen and believe, is the first form of society, a government founded by the Creator. All that can be said in favor of its peace and order, goes to set forth its collateral as well as its ascending and descending ties--to urge the obligations of brothers and sisters as well as parents and children.

Co-operation between the former is as essential to the home, as are protection and dependence between the latter.

But to come more closely to the point, is it not true that proper respect for parents urges the duty now under consideration and just filial love must needs be fraternal? Children cannot be true to their parents without being true to each other, and the welfare and charm of the household depends in no small degree upon the mutual help and moral harmony of its younger members. Children are not regarded as so many separate units, but as an organic whole, as members one of another; and when they are considerate and harmonious, they have new grace and worth in the parent's eye, more so to his heart, than the features of the fairest landscape where the particulars combine in the whole, and light, shade, grove and river, hill and valley--fair in themselves, are fairer together, can possibly have to the eye of the lover of nature. What under the heavens is more pleasant and lovely than brethren who with all their differences of taste and temperament still agree in aim and spirit? It is indeed like the dew of Hermon, that threw its silver veil over mountain and valley, and refreshed and beautified each tree and flower with a baptism from heaven.

But this relation of fraternal love to filial is but one of its aspects.

Brothers and sisters are related by what they owe directly to each other, as well as by what they owe to parents. The will of G.o.d, that bids them agree for their parents' sake, bids them also agree for their own sake.

Mutual educators of each other they must be, and by means far more powerful than school-books or lessons. They are constantly together, and this intercourse must be a selfish collision, if it be not a friendly reciprocity. In childhood, they must needs be frequent rivals for the favors and duties of the home, subjects of indulgences or sacrifices, that must awaken strife, unless they are shared in mutual deference. With childhood, however, the relation does not end, but may have in mature years its gravest importance, for in the order of nature parents are likely to be first taken from the world, and to all human view they may be beyond the reach of kindness or unkindness. But the relation of children to each other promises to last far longer, may create between the elder and younger a relation parental as well as filial, and for good or ill it must in some way continue as long as life itself. How essential, then, that a tie so enduring should be rightly regarded, and that in childhood, youth and maturity, it should keep its benignant hold over the family!

Nor does its importance end here. The method of G.o.d is, that the affections shall grow outward from within, and that being trained in kindness at home, men should be prepared to show good will to each other in all the concerns of life. As the patriarchal dispensation, in the grand course of ages, widened into the universality of the gospel, so in every true life, a just family culture is to expand into a generous humanity, that learns at home how to speak of a broader brotherhood, and a higher fatherhood. Whether G.o.d's method is not wiser than man's let experience show by contracting the windy declamation, that mistakes rhetorical generalities for comprehensive benevolence, and the judicious, unostentatious beneficence that carries out in all its relations the sober good will cherished in a wholesome household discipline, and so on a true pattern strives to build up the larger household of faith. The one begins at the root, and so branches out in blessing--the other would begin with the branches, which wither away when parted from the root.

So then in the will of G.o.d, revealed in the const.i.tution of the family, the welfare of its members, the spirit of humanity, we find the foundation of the duties of brothers and sisters. The fraternal sentiment must be in accordance. In all our affections, there must needs be some lights and shades that depend upon the individual's gifts and experience, for no man is a rule for all, and we must differ in our likings as in our looks. Yet all primal obligations have essential features in common; and the fraternal sentiment, although less instructive than the parental, and more complex than the filial, has quite as decidedly a character of its own.

The phrenologist may not locate it in a special organ of the brain, and the metaphysician may not make of it an instinct by itself, but it has its root none the less in nature, and loses no interest from expanding so generously under true a.s.sociations and culture. When true, the fraternal sentiment unites congeniality with consanguinity, and developes friends.h.i.+p from kindred blood, as the parted branches open into leaves, and blossoms, and fruits, kindred in their aims as their source. Its nature is better shown by tracing out its just influence than by attempting to arrest its flitting shades of hue, or to a.n.a.lyze its const.i.tuent elements.

Here, too, is the practical bearing of the subject, a bearing which many slight far more from thoughtlessness than from indifference. In what light are brothers or sisters called to regard each other?

Their first obvious duty is that of due consideration for each other. They are to consider each other's circ.u.mstances, needs, trials, dispositions, opportunities, and never allow selfishness or indifference to blind them to what belongs to them in common. Does this need to be said of persons who are so near, as of necessity to be always in each other's thoughts?

Ah, what is more frequent and obvious, than that familiarity tempts indifference, and that our very primal duties, like the stars which are their emblems, are easily forgotten because they may at any time be seen?

The things most significant are likely to be near at hand, and religion, like philosophy, finds its chief triumphs in opening the meaning of what G.o.d has brought to our very door. A part of the power of absence from home lies in breaking the spell of familiarity, and leading the absent one to look impartially upon the familiar circle, and upon his own place and conduct there. Many a youth or maiden has returned from a journey or voyage wiser far in sense of home duties than proud of the accomplishments of travel. True consideration will not need absence to teach this lesson, but from its calm point of view the absent one will survey the common spheres of life, and try to live for others as under the eye of G.o.d.

In each family there will be decided need for mutual consideration, and there must be strife, unless there is mutual deference. All cannot have all the favors, and the division of them may embroil a household as bitterly as the division of an empire has embroiled rival heirs of thrones. Where means are limited, mutual sacrifices not always easy must be made, and few families pa.s.s many years without feeling the power of consideration, or of selfishness in meeting the privations that must go round their circle. When means are abundant, and every wish has ready wealth at its command, the form of forbearance may change, but its essential spirit is none the less needed. There will still be differences of talent, looks, manners, opportunities, health, experience, that require in the most prosperous household the same virtues, that give the humblest cottage its dignity and peace. In every family, there will be some call for peculiar consideration or regard to some member of it, according as sickness, infirmity, youth, age, deficient or extraordinary ability, may call upon the stronger to serve the weaker. What wretchedness when the call is slighted, even by one! Who can calculate the mischief wrought by a sensual or reckless brother, who makes every thing secondary to his own pa.s.sions and pleasures, or by a frivolous and heartless sister, who makes a G.o.d of fas.h.i.+on and enslaves the whole house to her monstrous vanity!

Who, too, can calculate the influence of a high-minded brother in guiding and cheering the younger members of the family, or of a devoted and judicious sister in soothing every impatient humor with a face in which s.h.i.+nes, perhaps, the light of the sainted mother's countenance? When all unite in some common solicitude, G.o.d gives their daily bread and cup a sacramental grace, and from some sufferer whom they watch over together, a mighty blessing, uniting, exalting them all, comes forth, and seems to say in the sacred name, "Ye have done it unto me."

Consideration will lead to confidence, and will banish deceit, that viper of society, from the hearth-stone, which too often warms it into life. Let confidence begin early, move the lips first lisping for utterance, and continue in maturity, when the world's folly that sometimes names itself experience shall try to teach disguise as prudence, and artifice as wisdom. Whatever we may think of the confessor, as an official person, confession is founded in the nature of things, and G.o.d bids us confess our faults one to another. Who ought to be confidential, if not those whose experience and destiny so unite their lives? I cannot even glance at the chief forms of this confidential relation. One aspect may be specified which is too often forgotten--that between brother and sister. If these were more candid advisers, each would be better for it--each imparting to each the counsel that each can give. With feminine insight and purity, what a kind and gentle, yet strict and earnest censor of youthful excess, the one may be. With manly judgment and honor, what a firm and scrupulous, yet tender and considerate adviser in reference to many follies and dangers may the other be. Giddy as young people often are in their pleasures and caprices, it has sometimes seemed to me, that if a plan of life were to be drawn up by the youth of a family for each other, few treatises of morals would surpa.s.s it in purity of spirit or rect.i.tude of principle. Some follies would be sure to fall. Where would intemperance and its kindred vices be, if sisters were taken as counsellors? Where would indecent costumes, immodest dances, equivocal friends.h.i.+ps be, if brothers were more frequent advisers? This negative influence is not a t.i.the of the worth of the relation, which G.o.d in his infinite tenderness and wisdom has decreed--a relation so able to enrich ties of nature by every grace of mind and heart, and from likeness and unlikeness of const.i.tution to develope one of the finest harmonies of our being. Its beauty cheers many a dark age of ancient rudeness, and adorns many of the brightest chapters of our modern culture. Would we know what brother and sister have been to each other, listen to the triumphal song of Miriam, as she braced anew the great heart of the law-giver with timbrel and psalm; or look to the grave of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha stood with Him who was the Resurrection and the Life. Do we ask more modern instances, stand under the open heavens and remember how Caroline Herschel shared the vigils of their ill.u.s.trious explorer--open the pages of Neander, and think of her whose devotedness made a pleasant home of his otherwise solitary study, and encouraged him in his n.o.ble work of tracing out the progress of the divine life throughout all the mazes of theological controversy, and making church history a book of the heart, instead of the disputatious understanding. Do we need more--only conjecture the number of cases nearer at hand in which youth have been counselled and helped on through years of preparation to their calling or profession by a sacrifice that looked not to the world for motive, and asked not of the world reward for its success.

I need only name the crowning duty of brothers and sisters--the duty of being mutual helpers, for this is implied in what we have said of consideration and confidence. They whom G.o.d has so united should stand by each other in every worthy way--not selfishly exacting favors, but earnest to do good. Too often the contrary has indeed been the case, and history in most conspicuous pa.s.sages, from the death of Abel and the exposure of Joseph to the wars of the Plantagenets and the feuds of the Bourbons, shows that strifes are bitterest when nearest home, and "a brother offended is indeed harder to be won than a strong city, and their contentions are like the bars of a castle." Less conspicuous, because less monstrous, are the opposite cases, and Christianity itself leads the n.o.ble list of fraternal worthies, by presenting in its first disciples so many who carried ties of blood into bonds of faith, and strove together to the last for the kingdom that would make all brothers in G.o.d. The various forms of fraternal aid need not be specified, nor the cases described in which the death of parents or peculiar circ.u.mstances enhance the obligation, and the responsibility of parents devolves upon the elder children. Whatever the age, the welfare of children is closely connected with their mutual conduct, and its power reaches not merely to the division of time and cares, but to the highest interests of mind and heart. Firm principle, spiritual faith, devoted purposes, act and react collaterally with great power, and in the social as in the natural world, it is the side light and warmth that most applies the cheering rays from above. Happy the home where true peace dwells between kindred, and all various gifts are held in unity of spirit! While the circle remains unbroken, it is strong against the world. When broken it is still not desolate, and the orphan is not without a helper. There is love enough on earth to join with the love that has gone heavenward to make life cheerful, and keep hope firm.

Let all apply these thoughts. Children, apply them, and be kind in all you do and say. Youth, apply them, and be thoughtful where you are often tempted to be reckless. Elders, apply them, and never allow care or worldliness to chill the better affections of early days. Deep in the heart let the old home live, and its pleasant memories, brightened by kindly offices, open ever into immortal hopes. Old things must pa.s.s away, but from the Christian they can only pa.s.s away by being all made new--new in a spirit, that remembers best when progressing most, and crowns all friends.h.i.+ps with charity divine.

Marriage.

MARRIAGE.

It is a remarkable fact, that He who came to be the Saviour from sin, whose name is coupled with the sorrow that he would alleviate, began his public ministry at a marriage, and gave the first proof of his powers amidst its festivities. Yet why wonder at it--for where should the Gospel begin its work if not with the union that founds the family and should secure every social and moral good? How, moreover, could the genius of Christianity better show itself than by such a practical rebuke of the asceticism that scorned the social affections, and would make of life a ghostly austerity, just as if man were heavenly by being unearthly? It needs no great ingenuity to imagine our Lord's feelings, as with his kindly and majestic thought he looked upon that scene, and gave his blessing to the youth and maiden who were probably of his own kin. He saw all the serious and trying aspects of human life even in its best estate, yet none the less gave them joy upon their union.

It is well that he was at that feast. The ages since have remembered his presence, and his sacred name, heard still at the marriage, deepens its memory, and consecrates its joy. The two ideas thus connected in fact are connected in principle, and the moralist need not in any enlightened community fear to speak of the Christian view of marriage, or care at all either for the giggling levity that sees nothing solemn in the subject, or for the sanctimonious gravity, that considers religion profaned by being made practical. There are some difficulties in the way of a frank treatment of the subject; I know our customs do not favor the homely simplicity of the language of the Bible in the discussion of marriage, and he must be very adventurous who undertakes to use the plain speech of the old divines, whether in the quaint aphorisms of Thomas Fuller or the jewelled periods of Jeremy Taylor. Yet it is not well to be very fastidious or mystify any subject by ingenious circ.u.mlocution, and we propose to say some plain words on the relation of husbands and wives in continuation of these thoughts upon home duties.

Not much need be said upon the foundation of this relation. It rests clearly upon the will of G.o.d, the best good of the parties, and the welfare of society.

As the Creator and Preserver of mankind, as the Lord of Nature and the Father of Spirits, G.o.d has made us social beings, and decreed that the most important a.s.sociation should be a lasting one. The natural law, which in lower creatures establishes a transient union, enacts the permanence of the higher relation, and when profoundly studied agrees with the precepts of Revelation and the results of the best experience.

G.o.d's will is clearly shown in the effect of marriage upon the moral condition of the parties themselves. It is generally essential to their true life--to the proper development of their affections and faculties.

Under good Providence, it is the school of the heart, the motive to the most laudable exertion and sacrifice. There are persons indeed whose peculiar duties may exempt them from its cares,--scholars, devotees, philanthropists, who may give their whole heart to their chosen speciality, and make of science, religion or humanity their family and home. Yet these are not the general rule, and even these generally prove that the peculiar power acquired by concentrating their whole mind upon a single pursuit gives them force at the expense of breadth of culture, and may be morbid because preternatural. The monk and nun, in the convent or out of it, have done n.o.ble things, and every faithful memory must bless them for it--but not the n.o.blest things. They have shown much mercy, yet quite as much spiritual pride. If they have fed the poor, they have framed the Ma.s.s Book and the Confessional. If they have cared for the orphan, they have also invented infant d.a.m.nation and the Inquisition, insisting on h.e.l.l hereafter for all not baptized by their priesthood, and devising a h.e.l.l here below for all heretics against their creed. Unmarried people ruled Christendom for a thousand years, and that they did not rule in wisdom, the Bible, history, and our best modern culture all declare. Nay, the very sage of modern celibacy, Swedenborg, gave years of his life and the chief labors of his pen to prove, that the best wisdom comes from minds united conjugially, imbuing thought with affection, and informing affection with thought, and so best interpreting the G.o.d in Christ. They who may be puzzled by his mystical lore will have no difficulty with the more practical argument, or refuse to allow that the most healthy thought and feeling, the most comprehensive culture, frequents the home which a true marriage makes.

"Marriage," says Jeremy Taylor, "is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms and fills cities and churches and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which G.o.d hath designed the present const.i.tution of the world."

To carry out the argument and show the necessity of this relation to due provision for children, to the peace and purity of society at large, would but lead us into common-places that can as well be spared. Better pa.s.s on and speak of the nature and duties of the relation in question.

It differs from the other relations that we have thus far considered, first of all in the fact, that it is elective or voluntary. The tie is one of choice, not of blood, and of course this fact of itself speaks to reason and conscience to stir themselves in the choice, instead of leaving it to a giddy eye or a silly ear. The relation, moreover, is exclusive, and in this fact it is distinguished from all ties of blood and all other ties of choice. Again it is entire--extending to all the interests of human life. Elective, exclusive, entire, marriage is thus the most momentous of human relations. Decalogue, Gospel, Providence, experience, all declare it such, and rest upon an act of choice the only obligation that brooks no rival and allows no limitation.