Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, NOVEMB. 17, 1921. LOVE AND MARRIAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2356, 17 November 1921, Page 2

Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, NOVEMB. 17, 1921. LOVE AND MARRIAGE.

“ALL marriages are not made in Heaven,” said the Rev. .1. Napier Milne, lecturing at Rugby Street Methodist, Clmreli in Christchurch. More than half of the matrimonial tangles of the world began with young men and women fancying themselves in love. They did not conceive of love as something into which the mind and the character entered, hut as a sudden, violent emotion associated with the discovery of physical beauty and outward charm. When there was no common ground for two people to stand upon, it was the perfection of folly to marry. If they jarred upon one another during the days of courtship it ..was pretty certain that they would jar upon one another very much more when they were man and wife. Identity of opinion was not 'necessary, but love must include friendship and deep essential spiritual sympathy and agreement: Anything less than that might only be the fruit of passion. To be strangers to one another in the things that mattered most was to be unequally yollced, and the prospect of happiness in that case was exceedingly remote. The world needed a more exalted idea of marriage, of its hindingness and its responsibilities, .Judicial separations for cruelly and the like there must be, Imf divorce, except for adultery — and it was doubtful whether our Lord allowed even that exception — must be persistently discouraged and denounced. It was the scandal of our times that we were making divorce easy. Marriage was coming to be regarded in the nature of a mere contract which could be ended when one was tired of it. Marriage should look forward to permanency, however lightly and unadvisedly taken in hand. The refusal to admit final failure would often result in the relationship becoming beautiful and sacred.