Marriage vows

“ In every point connected with marriage, has this injurious plan been persevered in; the marriage ceremony is a remarkable instance of this, for, beautiful as it is as a service, it is certainly liable to this objection, that of making people vow before God that which it is not in human nature to control. The woman vows to love, and to honour, and to cherish; the man to love and cherish, until death doth them part. ”

“ The marriage ceremony is but a mockery, if the two who exchange vows are not expecting to find their chief earthly joys in each other’s society. But when they can bring their minds to a separation of weeks or months, just for pleasure, we think they little dream of the heartaches they are laying up in store for one another. ”

“ What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People would believe more simply in His ordinance, instituted “from the beginning”—not the mere outward ceremony of a wedding; but the love which draws together man and woman, until it makes them complete in one another, in the mystical marriage union, which, once perfect, should never he disannulled. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Straight as a dart, but with that look on her face, she came towards us. 'Did I hear aright?' were the words that came from her lips. 'Have you married me, a woman beneath your station as I now perceive, because you were commanded to do so? Have you not loved me? given me that which alone makes marriage a sacrament or even a possibility? ”

“ Being the first wife, while in the heyday of life and youth having her husband to herself, in obedience to the law of God she sacrificed her own feelings at the shrine of duty, and in compliance with the laws of celestial marriage was willing that others should also share the affections of her husband. ”

“ It remains only to allude to one more remarkable verse of this hymn, the eighteenth in the tenth book, which distinctly sanctions the marriage of widows:—
"Rise up, woman, thou art lying by one whose life is gone; come to the world of the living, away from thy husband, and become the wife of him who holds thy hand and is willing to marry thee." ”

“ There must be a mutual forbearance, no fierce wrestling to rule. If there is to be submission, let the wife show how meekly Omnipotent love suffereth all things. Purity, innocence, and holy beauty invest such a love with a halo of glory.
Man, mistake not then thy mate, and hereafter, bitterly repenting, exclaim at the curse of marriage. No, no, with prudent foresight, avoid the ball-room belle—seek thy twin soul among the pure-hearted, the meek, the true. Like must mate with like; the kingly eagle pairs not with the owl, nor the lion with the jackal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But one day it suddenly came into his mind that he would like to get married, and, moreover, that he would choose a very grand wife—a King’s daughter, in short. But as he did not trust himself as a wooer, he determined to send his old mother on the mission.
‘You must go to the King,’ he said to her, ‘and demand the hand of his lovely daughter in marriage for me.’
‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast at the idea. ‘Why cannot you marry someone in your own rank? ”

“ It may be years before we can live together as those who love one another as we love, may live with the good will of heaven. I only want you to become my wife in name, dearest. Our marriage must be kept a secret. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Now if it had been possible for them to have resisted that temptation, they would have been living now, just as fresh, and as full of vigor, life and animation, after six thousand years, as they were on the morning in which this ceremony of marriage took place; and if you should reflect upon millions and millions of ages in the future, they would still be considered husband and wife, while eternity should last. ”

“ I pray you—Laura, by the remembrance of our dead mother I pray you—never suffer so mistaken a thought to enter your mind, as that of quitting clandestinely your father’s house to become a wife. A marriage entered upon in disobedience and defiance could never prosper. ”

“ That is true of the main body of it; but no deeper, terser expression of the inmost blessedness of happy marriage was ever spoken than in the quiet words, 'The heart of her husband trusteth in her,' with the repose of satisfaction, with the tranquillity of perfect assurance. The bond uniting husband and wife in a true marriage is not unlike that uniting us with God. ”

“ By proclaiming a union of souls, and the spiritual uses of marriage as well as the spiritual nature of love truly conjugial, it teaches every woman who desires a true marriage, the necessity of elevating her thoughts and affections to things spiritual and divine, and of looking for some measure, at least, of heavenly wisdom in the man whom she is to call her husband. It teaches her that the supreme delights of marriage can never be known except to the spiritually minded and regenerate ”

“ He seems to want the mind that I would have the man blessed with that I am to vow to love and honor. I purpose whenever I marry to make a very good, and even dutiful wife; must I not vow obedience, and shall I break my marriage vow? ”

“ This heart within me burns.
"I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
"What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
[Pg 67] And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
"O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company! ”

“ And it must be remembered that half a century ago and less you might have journeyed inquisitively through the length and breadth of that land and have found probably not one case of divorce nor of separation without divorce: among that people marriage was truly for better or for worse—a great binding and unalterable sacrament of blended lives. If after marriage love's young dream ended, then you lived on where you were—wide awake; if all gorgeous colors left the clouds and the clouds left the sky, you stood the blistering sun ”

“ After divers washings and anointings and rubbings, the acting of an historic drama, the taking of oaths and grips, and the giving of a new name, celestial wisdom and joy are supposed to descend and forever rest upon the favored soul. Secret marriage rites, which seal husband and wife for time and eternity, form part of the ceremony. ”

“ So each young man, as he cast a last complacent glance in his mirror, recalled all sorts of romantic episodes in which wealthy damsels had fallen in love at first sight with some stranger, whom they had finally married against the wishes of their relatives,—for all these worthy bachelors had but one thought in this instance, marriage, and they even carried their honesty so far as to love marriage for the sake of marriage itself, and the bride became little more than an accessory in their eyes. ”

“ There's no talking to a young woman now about marriage, but she is all in a blaze about hearts, and darts, and—and—But hark ye, child, I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth—that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence—for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. ”

“ Are you speaking, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas! it is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would have made the women of other times laugh. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Nonsense, Hubbard. It's a woman's first duty to obey and cleave to her husband at all costs and whatever be the consequences or fancied consequences to her comfort or convenience. Marriage imposes that obligation on the woman in its sacramental character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What could be of more importance than the relationship of families—the solemn and sacred relationship of marriage? Nothing that we can conceive of. It affects us here and it affects us hereafter in the eternal world; therefore, if we can have these blessings pronounced upon us by divine authority and we, when we wake up in the morning of the first resurrection, find that we are not under the necessity of either marrying or giving in marriage, having attended to our duty beforehand, how happy we shall be to gather our wives and our children around us! ”

“ Heaven above us! what is it that makes marriage in the sight of God? It is that male and female should declare themselves man and wife before all folk, and live as such. The pastor and his mumblings are very well if you can get them, but it is the giving of the hand, not the setting of the ring upon it; it is the vowing of two true hearts, and not words read out of a book, that make marriage. ”

“ You must pardon the deception, dear sir, and you must perform the marriage ceremony without inconvenient scruples, or hesitation, or questions. Be thankful, for the sake of morality, we see the propriety of getting married at all. ”

“ Here we have a double paradox, two irreconcilable contradictions, which in due time produced their natural evil fruit. On the one hand, marriage is a sacrament, a holy mystery, yet it rests upon a mere human contract. ”

“ All these perfections and dispositions of the soul the bride sets forth before her Beloved, the Son of God, longing at the same time to be translated by Him out of the spiritual marriage, to which God has been pleased to advance her in the Church militant, to the glorious marriage of the Church triumphant. ”

“ And how clearly and impressively are the spiritual uses of marriage sometimes revealed here on earth!—A fond and devoted wife sees the partner of her bosom pursuing a downward and criminal course—plunging deeper and deeper into vice and infamy—gradually blinding his intellect, benumbing his moral sense, destroying his manhood. ”

“ There were two lower grades of civil marriage, but each gave a man supreme control of his wife, without the dignity of consecration. Whatever cruelty and suffering might result from this one-sided relation,—and the possibilities were enormous,—a woman was expected to love the husband chosen by her friends, for himself alone, and a bridegroom’s presents were limited by custom, so that she might not be tempted to love him for what he could give her. ”

“ But perhaps most persons, especially when young and looking forward to a long future of connubial happiness, consider the act of marriage more as a religious rite than a civil contract, and hence the forms and ceremonies of the Church accord more agreeably with the sentiment of love and affection than the business-like and informal words of the magistrate, who, in response to their acknowledgment of intention to marry, simply pronounces them man and wife. ”