There is, unhappily, only too much necessity for im- pressing these truths upon people. It is a mournful fact, that few steps in life are generally taken with so much levity, self-will, and forgetfulness of God as marriage. Few are the young couples who think of inviting Christ to their wedding ! It is a mournful fact that unhappy marriages are one great cause of the misery and sorrow of which there is so much in the world. People find out too late that they have made a mistake, and go in bit- terness all their days. Happy are they, who in the mat- ter of marriage observe three rules. The first is to marry only in the Lord, and after prayer for God's approval and blessing. The second is not to expect too much from their partners, and to remember that mar- riage is, after all, the union of two sinners, and not of two angels. The third rule is to strive first and foremost for one another's sanctification. The more holy married people are, the happier they are. " Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it,"* (Eph. v. 25, 26.)
* There is an expression in this passage which claims special ob- servation. The Pharisees told our Lord, that "Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away." The answer of our Lord is very remarkable. He says, " For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this precept." And He then goes on to show that this permission to divorce was a proof that their forefathers had fallen be- low the original standard of marriage, and were dealt with as being in a weak and diseased state of soul. For He says, " But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female."
The expression throws much light on some portions of the civil law of Moses. It shows us that it was an institution which in some of its requirements was specially adapted to the state of mind in which the Israelites were, on first leaving the land of Egypt. It was not intended in all its minute particulars to be a code of perpetual obliga- tion. It was meant to lead on to something better and higher, when
13 And they brought young chil- dren to him, that he should touch them : and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
14 But when Jesus saw U, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them
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