by William Bruce

“ That marriage exists in heaven follows as a conclusion from what has already been advanced on the subject. If, as we have seen, sex is grounded in the very constitution of the human soul, and is thus essentially spiritual, it cannot but exist in the spiritual world. If marriage is essentially a union of souls, death cannot dissolve it: if it is chaste, pure, and holy, it cannot be unworthy of a place in that kingdom inhabited by the pure in heart. Indeed, if marriage exists in its purity only with the heavenly-minded, where can it exist in its perfection but in heaven itself? ”

“ While married life affords the highest means for drawing out and strengthening all the good affections, it appeals to the best motives for controlling the evil propensities. To deny ourselves of any selfish gratification, or any evil temper for the sake of another's happiness, is a still higher motive than to do so for the sake of our own. This voluntary and habitual work of self-denial, while it is one of the truest signs of genuine love, is one of the highest uses of real marriage. Wherever there is love, there is fear, fear to injure, and thus to alienate, the object loved. ”

“ There is this essential difference between natural and spiritual love, that spiritual love is the love of one only of the sex: natural love is inherently the love of variety, and languishes under that restriction which spiritual love delights in. True love can only exist in unity. To divide is to destroy it. From the moment that the chosen partner ceases to be loved with the whole affection, from that moment the real conjugial connection is dissolved, and with it all the true delight of marriage. ”

“ Marriage is not of man, but of God. It cannot be derived from any combination of earthly affection and worldly prudence; it descends only from the marriage of heavenly love and wisdom in the mind, which looks not merely to temporal but also to eternal happiness. Those who would hope to reap its spiritual benefits, should remember that the choice or election of a partner must be made, not only from the promptings of love, but according to the dictates of wisdom. Natural love only is blind. Wisdom is the middle principle between genuine masculine and feminine love. ”

“ Regeneration and death effect, it is true, important changes in the state and condition of the human being, but neither of them can eradicate a single affection of his nature. Regeneration purifies and regulates all the affections, but destroys none; and death, though it appears to extinguish life, only severs the connection between soul and body, when the soul, which is the real man, enters the eternal world in full possession of all the affections and powers which he ever enjoyed in this life, and therefore capable of all the attachments and relationships which had been formed from them. ”

“ By this beautiful act of creative wisdom, that which would have become in man the narrowest and most debasing self-love, has been transformed into an object of the most disinterested and ennobling affection. ”

“ Although, therefore, marriage is allowed to be a religious covenant, it is not believed to be a spiritual and eternal union. And when marriage is held to be only natural and temporary, there is reason to fear that all true spiritual love, from which it derives the whole of its purity and blessedness, is extinguished, and that nothing remains but the heat of the natural affections, which are admissive of no higher ends or purer enjoyments than those of the world and the flesh. ”

“ It is possible for the human agent in this important labour to pervert the order and destroy the beauty of the Divine works, by making the outward character in some measure the reverse of the inward principle. From false views of the equality of the sexes, woman is most in danger. The feminine mind may come to be invested in masculine intelligence, which in itself is hard, daring, and fond of licentiousness, instead of being clothed in the soft raiment of feminine wisdom, which in itself is yielding, modest, pacific, and tender. ”

“ If this love were to remain with the male human being it would destroy him, by re-acting against the former, and turning his wisdom into folly. It was, therefore, provided from creation that this latter love should be taken out of the man and implanted in the woman, for the purpose of effecting spiritual marriage, by which man is restored to a state of integrity. The love which man has for his own wisdom is the rib, the intellectual proprium or self-hood, which is taken out of the man and made into a woman, by which she becomes bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. ”

“ True love ever desires reciprocation; and love can only be reciprocated by love; but there can neither be love nor reciprocation, except where there is liberty.
I have not dwelt on the economical duties of marriage,—some of which are proper to the husband, and others to the wife,—as the distinction is well known and acknowledged. These duties, equally important and useful, are intended to meet in the common uses of marriage—order, comfort, and happiness. ”

“ From those who are united in love truly conjugial, children derive an inclination to perceive the things of wisdom, and to love the things which wisdom teaches; and when to this we add the superior principles by which spiritually minded parents are actuated in the education of their children,—to fit them not only for this world but for another,—we cannot but conclude that marriage is the true seminary of heaven, as well as the legitimate means of replenishing the earth. ”

“ The first duty, therefore, of married partners is to cherish that exclusive love for each other, on which their union and mutual happiness depend, and to guard against every temptation to weaken or divide it.
One of the duties on which union and happiness greatly depend, is that of acting in all things in unity from love, that each may be left in the enjoyment of freedom; since it is impossible for any mutual love or happiness to exist where one party assumes dominion, and reduces the other to a state of servitude. ”

“ Marriage provides most effectually for these and all kindred uses, because it is that state of life most favourable to the growth both of natural and spiritual virtue, and thence to the formation of the heavenly life. That state of life has the greatest tendency to spiritualise the mind, which tends most to weaken self-love, and to strengthen mutual affection. And one of the principal uses of the married life is its constant tendency to draw out the affections, and place them on other objects than self. ”

“ Equally created into the image and likeness of God, equally possessed of the human faculties of will and understanding, and equally designed for an immortality of happiness, they stand in the sight of God on a footing of perfect equality. Women are not inferior to men even in their boasted power of understanding. Although the understanding of the woman is less active than that of the man, it is not less excellent. The masculine intellect is more reflective than perceptive; the feminine intellect is more perceptive than reflective. ”

“ Is it reasonable to suppose that a union which becomes more interior and happy as the parties become more matured in the life of heaven, shall be broken off at the very threshold of eternity? How unlike, then, must be the state of preparation to the state of enjoyment! ”

“ True love for a conjugial partner surpasses in excellence all other kinds of mutual affection. Being more deeply rooted in the human heart,—having, indeed, a deeper ground in the constitution of our nature,—its sympathies and its duties, its sorrows and its joys, call into action more interior principles of our minds, and, affecting us more deeply, act upon us more powerfully and beneficially. ”

“ Without marriage heaven would fail, and human society would be dissolved. Marriage not only provides in all possible cases against the moral and spiritual degeneracy of our race, but, in its orderly condition and right state, provides for their moral and spiritual improvement, by imparting to children better hereditary inclinations, and in affording them such instruction and training as are calculated to make them useful members of society in this world, and happy subjects of the Lord's kingdom in the world to come. ”

“ Nor is there a single object in nature, however minute, in which this resemblance may not be traced; for nothing exists which does not contain in itself something analogous to love and wisdom, and to their conjunction. Creation, therefore, from its highest spiritual to its lowest natural constituents, consists of a succession of forms produced from the united activity and operation of Divine love and wisdom,—forms, therefore, in which these may exist as in their created and finite receptacles. ”

“ But the equality of the sexes is not an equality of sameness, but of diversity. Their diversity is the ground of their unity. It is because they are so completely two, that they are capable of becoming so perfectly one. Each has peculiar and incommunicable excellencies. And this distinction of character ought to be scrupulously preserved; for the more it is preserved, the more capable are they of interior union. ”

“ Children born of parents who are merely in a natural and not a spiritual state of life, are not, indeed, to be considered as being without the faculty, or destitute of all the means of becoming spiritual when they grow up. Every one, whether descended from good or evil parents, inherits the conjugial principle, and the faculty of becoming a subject of the heavenly marriage, and an inhabitant of heaven. This principle, and this faculty, are in the inmost of every human soul, where the Lord is present with his love and wisdom united. ”

“ If married partners would continue to love each other as exclusively and tenderly and deferentially as in the days of courtship, there would be fewer complaints of disappointed hopes and diminished happiness. When such results follow the consummation of the union, it may be concluded either that the affection has been altogether natural, or that any spirituality it possessed has been dissipated by the neglect or violation of the duties of the marriage covenant. Of the two affections from which marriage is generally contracted, the love of the sex is frequently more ardent than conjugial love ”

“ If one of the highest uses of marriage consists in the higher capacity and better opportunities it affords for promoting advancement in the life of heaven, its highest duties must consist in those which leave the parties in the best condition for spiritual progression. The absence of all inclination to govern by mere authority is essential to the very existence of conjugial love. This liberty does not imply a license for either party to follow freely any vicious inclination, or any course inimical to their conjugial or domestic happiness. ”

“ If such a state of marriage is rare, it is in consequence of the rarity of genuine practical religion, and of not immediately approaching in worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Such was its state once upon earth, and such is its state in heaven. If we would enjoy it ourselves, let us cultivate with all the heart that practical religion which consists in loving the Lord and keeping his commandments. Let us from the inmost convictions of the soul approach in worship the Lord Jesus Christ, as one with the Father and the only God. ”

“ III. The uses of marriage may be considered as natural and spiritual, or such as relate to the body and the world, and such as relate to the soul and heaven. Yet its natural uses, though distinct from those which are spiritual, were designed to make one with them; and some of its uses, which are commonly regarded as only natural, are, at the same time, eminently spiritual. Thus, while marriage serves the natural use of populating the earth, it is also the source whence heaven is supplied with inhabitants. ”

“ But its root is far from being destroyed even in Protestant Christendom, where it is still an almost universally received opinion that marriage is an institution suited only to our grosser nature as inhabitants of the present world, and that the inclination which leads to it is of the flesh rather than of the spirit. Bishop Taylor, in his, in many respects, beautiful sermons upon marriage, remarks that, "of the two states, celibacy is the more pure, marriage the more useful;" which forces upon us the conclusion that in a divine institution purity and utility are at variance. ”

“ It implies liberty in all things that are orderly,–the free enjoyment of the rights which belong to the husband and wife, as parties in a covenant, the benefits of which can only be truly realised by the freest affection—by mutual service yielded by love, not extorted by fear. ”

“ Marriage is also the origin of all the ties of relationship, and consequently of all the affections which form them, and which are the chords whose vibrations first awaken tender emotions in the heart. ”

“ Of such only can it be said, that God has joined them together; for those only can be said to derive their union from God, whose love for each other is grounded in love to him. Such are united in soul and in mind, as well as in body. It is important and consolatory to be assured, that, however rare in these days, marriages of this description are provided of the Lord for those who from an early age have loved, have wished, and have asked of Him a legitimate and lovely connection with one of the sex, shunning and abominating wandering lust. ”

“ It is only what is purely masculine in the male, and what is purely feminine in the female that can enter into such a union as constitutes a marriage. Whatever, therefore, either acquires or assumes which is proper to the other, must obstruct their union, and cannot fail to disturb their harmony, and mar their happiness. We therefore find in the Holy Scriptures a law against this violation of order. "The man shall not put on the garments of the woman, neither shall the woman wear what pertaineth to the man." The masculine and feminine principles are the workmanship of God ”