Marriage Supper of the Lamb

“ And many, on the other hand having that, there must be a preparation for the marriage; they must not come to Christ in their sin and guilt, and not knowing but he is angry; especially after a great out-cast, ye will stand afar off from Christ, and not seek after him at all because ye are not prepared. The Lamb's wife doth make herself ready. ”

“ Let the bride rejoice, let all the saints rejoice, for the day of the marriage with the bridegroom, even the Lamb of God, is at hand, and his fair white robes shall be given her, she shall be arrayed with the golden vestry and the needle work of his manifold graces that shall be put under her; he who is her life, shall quickly appear, and fire shall quickly appear with him, in the glory and happiness of a consummate marriage. ”

“ Fletcher then spoke from these verses in such a manner as greatly tended to spiritualise the solemnities of the day He said, ’We invite you to our wedding, but the Holy Ghost invites you to the marriage of the Lamb. The bride, the Lamb’s wife, represents the whole Church, triumphant and militant united together. You may all be the bride, and Jesus will condescend to be the Bridegroom Make yourselves ready by being filled with the Spirit.’ He then engaged in prayer. ”

“ When the death of the second wife shows that the device has been unsuccessful, a mock-marriage of the bridegroom to a tree or a sheep, adorned like a bride, is resorted to before his marriage with a woman. ”

“ We often draw our joy home to ourselves, and make Christ a babe to play ourselves with, and feed our foolish sense with: were we thankful, and refer all our sense to praising you would not get so many hungry meals. But what is the matter? Wherefore are we bidden rejoice and be glad? The Kirk speaks her words with a warrant, wherefore rejoice: know ye no better? Have not ye good cause to rejoice? Is not the Lamb's marriage come? Then nothing more feeds the soul of the godly with delight nor this, that the marriage-day is come and at hand. ”

“ Then the widow said to the man's daughter, "Do you hear, tell your father I wish to marry him, and you shall every morning wash in milk and drink wine, but my daughter shall wash in water and drink water." So the girl went home and told her father what the woman had said, and he replied, "What shall I do? Marriage is a comfort, but it is also a torment." ”

“ A young girl has lost her mother, the father marries again, and marries a friend of his former wife. The child is ill reconciled to it, but being dressed in new clothes for the marriage, she runs up to her mother's chamber, filled with the idea how happy that dear mother would be at seeing her in all her glory—not reflecting, poor soul! ”

“ How many glorious married couples in heaven—Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of them!
As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up, husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. ”

“ The first time a daughter is married, her parents present a hog, a fowl, or a plantain tree, to their son-in-law, before it is allowable for them to eat of his provisions; but this is not customary when the woman has previously had a husband. In some places the lover offers the bride’s father a present of fruit, fish, or other articles, the value of which depends upon his rank. Chieftains of the higher classes generally give a feast on the occasion of a daughter’s marriage. ”

“ My eyes shall serve instead of wine, For costly meats my maiden brow. My neck shall be his honey comb. His bed the dewy grass shall be, And heaven his stately canopy. His head shall rest upon my arm. O mother! give the youth a home, And shelter, shelter him from harm." S. J. B. LXXVIII MARRIAGE SONGS The Marriage Leader:
"Make ready! make ready," To his sister the youth is repeating; "Make ready my steed for the wedding, O sister! the young Doge [29] is waiting. I'm bid to the wedding, I'm summon'd to guide To the wedding the maiden—the Doge's young bride." ”

“ In another locality the groom's-man is bound during the whole long night to throw nuts at the husband, who cracks them, and gives the kernel to his bride to eat. The festivity which a marriage occasions generally lasts three days, and, on Friday, the youthful wife embraces the companions of her childhood and bids them farewell, as if she never meant to return. ”

“ As she passed into the vestry to sign the marriage register, leaning proudly upon the arm of her newly made husband, and followed by her few attending personal friends, a man who had witnessed the ceremony from behind a clustered pillar in the church, stole out into the square, his face lighted by a lurid smile, his eyes emitting the same peculiar, exultant gleam as the bride’s had done. ”

“ The bridegroom on dismounting walks seven times round the palanquin, the bride’s brother at each turn giving him a cut with an oleander twig, and the women of the family throwing showers of cake from the windows. He retires, and while mounting his horse, and before he is in the saddle, the bride’s father comes out, and, giving him a present, leads him into the marriage-hall.... The girl keeps her eyes closed throughout the whole day, not opening them until the bridegroom is ushered into the marriage-booth, so that the first object she sees is her intended husband. ”

“ It is something worth indeed, that the poor widow, the Kirk, has married so right a husband: For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof Psal. xxiv I Ye need not fear scant nor that Christ will scale house; The marriage is come It is not simply he glorified in heaven but the time when God will make good all his promises to his Kirk in Christ. Saw ye was not this marriage of the Lamb before? Yea was not Christ his Kirk's husband and well-beloved from the beginning? ”

“ A feast is held, at which a sheep is killed, and the guests make a present of a few annas to the bridegroom, who ties up the money in a cloth, and, going to the bride's hut, conducts her to her future home. Widows are permitted to marry again. ”

“ Herr Hausberger was telling me last night that when an alp-girl marries, all the hunters and peasants, her discarded lovers, whom she has admitted to the intimacy of her châlet on the mountains, leave a cradle at the door of her chosen husband on the night of the wedding. The good man wakes up the morning after his marriage to find staring him in the face, on his own threshold, these tangible proofs of his wife’s little slips in her spinster existence. ”

“ Moreover, the delivery of the cattle, on the one side, and the delivery of the girl on the other, are considered as constituting the validity of the marriage contract, and are looked upon in much the same light as the giving of a ring by the husband and the giving away of the bride by her father in our own marriage ceremonies. ”

“ O king, is this the son of Indra? You have found a fine bridegroom; you are indeed happy; don’t delay the marriage; delay is improper in doing good; we never saw so glorious a wedding! It is true that we once heard of a camel being married to a jenny-ass; when the ass, looking up to the camel, said, ‘Bless me, what a bridegroom!’ and the camel, hearing the voice of the ass, exclaimed, ‘Bless me, what a musical voice!’ In that wedding, however, the bride and the bridegroom were equal ”

“ The bride is taken to the house of the bridegroom, where they sit side by side on a plank, and the ceremony of warding off the evil eye is performed. Further, milk is poured by people with crossed hands over the heads of the couple. A feast is held, in which meat takes a prominent part. A Maravan, who was asked to describe the marriage ceremony, replied that it consists in killing a sheep or fowl, and the bringing of the bride by the bridegroom's sister to her brother's house after the tāli has been tied. ”

“ The time is one of much fun and merriment, the women of the house bantering and taunting the bridegroom, especially when he is long in finding his wife’s hiding-place. When she is found the bridegroom leads the bride to the marriage-hall, and they sit there combing each other’s hair. ”

“ When a man feels a desire to enter the matrimonial state, he goes to the father of the woman on whom he has settled his affection, and demands her in marriage. If the parent be favorable to the match, the affair may be considered as settled. An ox or a cow is then killed outside the door of the bride's home, and the ceremony is over. ”

“ When she has thus obtained a wife for her husband, she carries her home, puts her to bed with her husband, where, having left her, she feasts with the bride's relations. There the children of the first marriage are produced, and the men of the bride's family put each their hands upon these children's heads, and afterwards take the oath in the usual manner, to live and die with them as their own offspring. ”

“ The lamb then changed himself into a handsome prince and went to the Lord of the Great Council, and asked his eldest daughter in marriage; and his proposal being accepted, the prince asked the princess: "Have you any objection to marry a white lamb?" ”

“ Just as the ceremony of the wedding favors is a symbol that the heart and home of the bride are won, that of the cabbage is a symbol of the fruitfulness of marriage. When breakfast is over on the day after the wedding, this fantastic representation begins. Originally of Gallic derivation, it has passed through primitive Christianity, and little by little it has become a kind of mystery, or droll morality-play of the Middle Ages. ”

“ The bride and bridegroom are waiting, and the reader for a share of the feast.
"Now I am going to join you two in wedlock; it cannot make you worse, it may better. Look me in the face. Now, Matilda and Thomas, take each other by the right hand, look at me, while I unite you in the holy bonds of marriage by God's ordinance. Do you think you are sufficiently sober to comprehend its solemnity?"
"Yes, sir."
"Marriage being one of God's holy ordinances, cannot be kept in sin, misery, filth, and drunkenness. ”

“ These and similar utterances you may very well hold over your wife.” [510]
In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1 Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband; whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether the first be living or dead! ”

“ But in the end the head is always taken away. The binding portion of the marriage is the bhānwar or walking round the sacred post. When the bride is leaving for her husband’s house the women of her party take seven balls of flour with burning wicks thrust into them, and place them in a winnowing-fan. They wave this round the bride’s head and then throw the balls and after them the fan over the litter in which the bride is seated. The bridegroom’s party must catch the fan, and if they let it fall to the ground they are much laughed at for their clumsiness. ”

“ They inter their relations in a very slovenly manner, and may often be found lying drunk about the grave: their marriage forms are extremely simple, the bride and bridegroom mutually mark each other’s faces with red ochre, after which, they lock their little fingers together, and avow their union: the ceremony is usually concluded by a sacrifice to the muddled deity, in which all bear their parts with great eagerness, and devotion! ”

“ If no husband has been found for a girl before she reaches puberty, certain propitiatory rites have to be performed, at which one of her female relations represents her. On the fourth day of the marriage ceremony, the bride and bridegroom, before they bathe, rub each other’s bodies with oil, and, going to a large caldron containing water, throw a gold and silver ring into it, and pick them out three times. ”

“ There are great rejoicings when the procession arrives at the house, where the bridegroom is anxiously awaiting to receive his spouse. As she alights from the carriage more sheep are sacrificed on the door-step—and the husband, too, is sacrificed to a certain extent, for again he has to content himself with merely conducting his bride to the harem and to leave her there. It is only late in the evening, when all the guests, stuffed with food, have departed, that the husband is led by his best man to a special room prepared for him and his wife in the harem. ”

“ The bread and meal, which were placed on the pots, are eaten by the relatives of the husband publicly in the pandal. After this ceremony is over, the pair are again anointed, during which process there must be music and singing. The next day, the whole of the party set off for the bride’s house, where the marala pendli, or second marriage, is performed. Before setting out, the husband and wife bow down at the feet of the elders, and receive their blessing. The husband must provide an abundance of toddy for all. ”

“ Alluding briefly to other superstitions associated with marriage, we are told in the North of England that she who receives from the bride a piece of cheese, cut by her before leaving the table, will be the next bride among the company. In Yorkshire, too, when a newly-married couple first enter their house, a hen is brought and made to cackle as a sign of good luck. ”