MARRIAGE
W. John Murray
The Astor
Lectures
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1917, 8th ed.
“Thus at their shady lodge
arrived, both stood,
Both turned, and under op’n sky
ador’d
The God that made both sky, air, earth,
and heaven,
Which they beheld; the moon’s
resplendent globe
And starry pole: ‘Thou also
mad’st the night,
Maker Omnipotent, and thou the
day,
Which we in our appointed work
employ’d
Have finished, happy in our mutual
help
And mutual love, the crown of all our
bliss,
Ordain’d by thee, and this
delicious place,
For us too large, where thy abundance
wants
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the
ground.
But thou has promised from us two a
race
To fill the earth, who shall with us
extol
Thy goodness infinite, both when we
wake,
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of
sleep.’
This said unanimous, ...into their
inmost bower
Handed they went; and eased the putting
off
These troublesome disguises which we
wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor
turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the
rites
Mysterious of connubial love
refused;
Whatever hypocrites austerely
talk
Of purity, and place, and
innocence,
Defaming as impure what God
declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free
to all.
Our maker bids increase; who bids
abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and
man?
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true
source
Of human offspring, sole
propriety
In Paradise of all things common
else.”
---Milton (Paradise Lost, Bk.
IV).
[206] On one
occasion while Jesus was preaching the
gospel in the temple at Jerusalem, the
chief priests and the scribes,
“sent forth spies, which should
feign themselves just men that they might
take hold of his words, that so they
might deliver him unto the power and
authority of the governor. And they asked
him, saying, ‘Master, we know that
thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither
acceptest thou the person of any, but
teachest the way of God truly: Is it
lawful for us to give tribute unto
Caesar, or no?’ But he perceived
their craftiness, and said unto them,
‘Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny.
Whose image and superscription hath
it?’ They answered and said,
‘Caesar’s.’ And he said
unto them, ‘Render therefore unto
Caesar the things which be Caesar’s
and unto God the things which be
God’s.’”
Marriage is
the superscription of Caesar written upon
an ordinance of God. It partakes,
therefore, of a dual nature. As an
ordinance of God it represents the
coalition of soul interests in [207]
behalf of the welfare of the universe. As
such it is the highest expression of
love, for it is, as was the love of Dante
for Beatrice, a phase of love so pure
that the highest happiness it seeks is to
serve the needs of its beloved. As a
human ordinance, wedlock is the least
understood institution of modern times;
therefore it is undoubtedly the most
desecrated of the ordinances sanctioned
by man. In the present state of the
world’s spiritual ignorance it
falls little short of being a labyrinth
in whose intricate meanderings many brave
explorers lose their way.
Matrimony
preceded man-made law, but by a strange
perversion of justice, it has come to
depend entirely upon these laws for its
legitimate existence. Paul has said:
“And the commandment which was
ordained unto life, I found to be unto
death--for the law made nothing
perfect.” As a legal institution,
marriage is an imperfect ordinance.
Nevertheless it must continue to bear
Caesar’s superscription until such
time as humanity no longer will need
“corrosive laws” and
“parchment bonds” to support
its tottering integrity. Through science,
or suffering, humanity will eventually be
delivered from the law, “and will
serve in newness of Spirit and not in the
oldness of the letter.” But until
the dawn of that long awaited day,
marriage will be in subjection to human
laws, for reasons which are so obvious
that “silence is more considerate
than speech.” The “law is not
made for a righteous man, but for the
lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly
[208] and for sinners, but we know that
the law is good, if a man use it
lawfully, for what the law cannot do, in
that it is weak” we may do by the
higher law of righteousness.
The
“graceful incapacity” of the
average girl welded to the “caprice
of egotistical manhood” seldom
results in happiness, but as long as men
and women are self-deluded into the
belief that the law has a right to unite
them, regardless of conflicting
personalities, they are obliged to endow
the law with sufficient power to annul
their bonds, if it is necessary to their
happiness. Indiscriminate marriages must
breed divorces, the least vital of the
promiscuous evils that spring from unwise
marriages.
The greatest
calamity that follows in the train of an
ill-assorted union is the misery into
which the offspring of this alliance is
mercilessly plunged. The child’s
misery is not mitigated by the fact that
his birth was authorized by marriage, or
legalized by creative instinct, nor does
he care whether or not his parents are
separated by a “legal”
divorce or by the wanton desertion of one
or the other parent. These victims are
concerned with the fact that they are
deprived of their divine rights by an
indiscriminate law and that they have no
redress. Children are the ones who should
be authorized to compel all parents to
provide for and maintain comfortably
their unfortunate offspring.
The marriage
that God has sanctioned is the
“vowed transition of temporary into
untiring [209] service and of fitful into
eternal love.” This is the
spiritual union which does not need the
seal of man’s approval.
Companionship is essential to happiness.
Either sex is dependent upon the other
for completion. Man’s
intellectuality needs the insight of
woman’s intuition to supply the
wings for its upward flight above the
shoals of spiritual barrenness into
“the Truth in which all intellect
finds rest”; as Dante has said,
“intellect never appeases its
longings until it is illumined by the
Truth.” Woman by reason of her
intuition is nearer to the perception of
Truth than man, but the latter by reason
of the greater possibilities afforded
him, is the average woman’s
superior, intellectually. The union of
the noble intellect, with pure intuition,
begets the blest existence that keeps
“itself within the will
divine,” and,
“Love unfettered in this court
sufficeth
To follow the eternal
Providence.”
Woman, who
by nature is less independent than man,
has urgent necessity of man’s
protection as well as of his gentle
guidance. The highest form of
companionship is found in marriage. In
fact a happy union is a very splendid
friendship which finds its fulfillment,
as in the case of Boaz and Ruth, in a
God-given conception (Ruth 4:13)
that gave to the world the great King
David. As there is a celestial trinity
there is also an earthly three in one, in
the [210] union of wisdom and love which
results in the expression of the fidelity
and innocence found only in little
children. It is in this gathering of
“two or three” that Christ is
found. This is the union that is blest by
God, from which:
“Breathes forth a love that all
the world
Below is greedy to learn tidings
of.”
Such a
marriage may be likened to suns
“resolving in fluent and rebounding
curves which only recede from each other
in order to return again with renewed
swiftness, and which together blend their
rays into the glory of one double
star.”
This is the
union that man may not put asunder. The
magic wand that transforms marriage from
a matter of convenience, to a divine
institution, is the love that is faithful
unto death in seeking its own in
another’s good; a love that
nourishes itself by what it gives, and
not by what it takes. But such a love is
the fruit of the Spirit, which ripens in
the union of mental and spiritual equals.
It is never present at the “welding
together of ephemeral sense
attractions.”
The wisdom
of the response which Jesus made to the
spies foiled the purpose of the chief
priests and scribes, and so the
Sadducees, who denied the possibility of
the resurrection, went to him saying:
[211]
“Master, Moses wrote unto us, that
if any man’s brother die, having a
wife, and he die without children, his
brother should take his wife and raise up
seed unto his brother. There were
therefore seven brethren: and the first
took a wife and died without children.
And the second took her to wife, and he
died childless. And the third took her;
and in like manner the seven also: and
they left no children, and died. Last of
all the woman died also. Therefore in the
resurrection whose wife of them is she?
for seven had her to wife. And Jesus
answering said unto them, The children of
this world marry, and are given in
marriage: But they which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world and
the resurrection from the dead, neither
marry, nor are given in marriage. Neither
can they die any more.”
The
Sadducees’ question directly
referred to marriage as the
superscription of Caesar. The Master
answered their question on its own basis,
which was that of marriages such as
constitute the majority of worldly
unions, into which neither common sense
nor wisdom--the foundation and
corner-stone of every wise
partnership--enter.
The fact
that Jesus did not marry does not
constitute an argument against matrimony.
He was a public man, without private
interests. In the dedication of his life
to the public welfare, he had consecrated
his time to the salvation of [212]
mankind. Not even Jesus could serve two
masters; therefore, as was his custom, he
sacrificed domestic happiness for the
universal salvation of the multitudes.
The Master never married, but by his
unfeigned love for the sister of his
friend, an affection characterized by the
chastest purity, he demonstrated for
others the possibility of the sublimely
pure, ideal relationship, the best
foundation upon which to build the true
marriage. No child bore his name, and yet
every flower-like face of childhood that,
with upturned head gazed into the
Master’s kindly eyes, understood
the magic of the universal Fatherhood
which Jesus represented; and of which he
assumed the universal responsibilities
while yet denying himself its individual
happiness. Churchianity, perhaps
unconsciously, has hidden the humanity of
Jesus in the traditional trappings of
ecclesiastical mysticism, but the
humanity of the Son of man “bound
up with love together in one volume,
through the universe in leaves is
scattered.”
There is no
excuse, and there should be no license
for marriage until the contracting
parties thoroughly understand and are
willing and able to assume the mutual
obligations growing out of the most
sacred relationship in the universe. The
time for men and women to analyze their
capacity to love and to suffer for each
other, is before marriage. For suffering
is the price of love, and it is necessary
to the purification of love. A
mother’s love is purified in the
[213] furnace of affliction before
she presses her babe to her breast. A
wife’s love, on the contrary, is
purified after she has come into the
possession of her heart’s desire,
but the true woman will not refuse to
keep her compact simply because she has
not been obliged to keep it in advance.
If man takes his nuptial vows in jest,
‘tis well that without end he
should lament,
“Who for the love of
things that do not last,
Eternally despoils himself of
Love.”
Those who
are not educated up to a high standard of
love before marriage will find it
difficult to rise to love’s demands
afterwards, and as long as society
lionizes the licentiate, and weds virtue
to vice, women will sow to the wind and
their offspring will reap the
whirlwind.
The license
that society has granted to the lover
will be difficult for the wife to revoke.
The most conspicuous cause for marital
wrecks is that which is known as
shattered moral obligations. Most of
these disasters would be forestalled if
the wife would substitute tact for
spleen. No man will desert his wife for a
lesser relation. Anyone who does is
merely in the state of moral development
where he passes for a man, and the wise
wife will ignore the apparent disloyalty
and thereby put it to an ignominious
death. As long as society admits of sex
in sin and establishes two paces for the
children of men, the latter are to be
pitied rather [214] than blamed for their
wholesale disregard of moral decency.
When women demand more of men
before marriage they will find
less opportunity for complaint
afterwards. In the present state of the
world’s spiritual development, both
men and women are victims of false social
systems whereby “every day the
Christ is bought and sold.” To
marry under existing conditions demands
abnormal mutual sacrifices on the part of
both man and woman.
The weakest
link in a woman’s chain of
existence is her childish jealousy, and
it is an element that must be ruled out
of successful marriage compacts. In the
home suspicion colors everything with the
somber hue of its black shadow and closes
the door on happiness. In the nation it
is a breeder of warfare which is nothing
short of wholesale slaughter, massacre
and wanton rapine--legalized! Selfishness
is at the root of all jealousy and the
home is no place for selfishness.
“Woman is endowed by divinity to be
the protecting genius of man’s
infancy, the charm of his youth, and the
support and counsel of his
maturity”; by reason of this she is
the route by which man finds his way to
his own soul! Wives and mothers, rise and
overthrow the demon of jealousy, and,
profiting by the mistakes of past
generations, meet the necessity of
educating the fathers of the coming race
morally and spiritually by the potency of
Christly example. Raise the standard of
virtue to accord with spiritual
requirements, for in no other way [215]
can your sons and daughters come into
their rightful inheritance, which is to
become the parents of the
spiritually-minded.
The union of
virtue with vice would result in the
transformation of vice, if virtue
were more wisely loving and less
exacting. If love would magnify the
God-given intelligence that is dormant in
every living creature and minimize the
ignorance that conceals it, it would make
the crooked paths of superstition that
“pleasure lurks in sin”
straight. True Love would lift marriage
from the mire of “legalized
lust,” and enthrone it in the
heaven of Purity. Such love would smooth
the rough places of doubt that linger in
man’s mind concerning the spiritual
status of feminine love, and man would be
redeemed in spite of himself.
All material
institutions are erected upon a tottering
foundation. Marriage as an exactment is
no exception to the rule, for it is
largely erected upon superstition and
ignorance. The fanaticism that would
feign to believe that it is within
man’s domain to unite that which
God has not joined, vice and virtue, and
the ignorance which supports this fallacy
by mistaking codes, all too often devised
by the worst passions of men for divine
law, need to be educated out of
themselves by women. In the higher
order of spiritual intelligence there
will be no taxation without
representation. It is the union of wisdom
with omnipotent love which will open
“thoroughfares ‘twixt heaven
and earth,” [216] and it will
express itself in the diffusion of
“its virtue multiplied among the
stars.” Churchianity cannot take
the place of Christianity, which is the
incorporation of the Christ principle in
our daily life. Church as an institution,
“striving for appearances, doth
make its own inventions”--and the
Evangel holds its peace.
“One sayeth that the moon did
backward turn
In the Passion of Christ, and interpose
herself
So that the sunlight reached not down
below;
Florence has not so many Lapi and
Bindi
As fables such as these, that every
year
Are shouted from the pulpit back and
forth,
In such wise that the lambs, who do not
know,
Come back from pasture fed upon the
wind;
And not to see the harm doth not excuse
them.
Christ did not to his first disciples
say,
‘Go forth, and to the world
preach idle tales,’
But unto them a true foundation
gave;
. . . . . . . . . .
Now men go forth with jests and
drolleries
To preach, and if but well the people
laugh
The hood puffs out, and nothing more is
asked.
But in the cowl there nestles such a
bird,
That, if the common people were to see
it,
They would perceive what pardons they
confide in,
For which so great on earth has grown
the folly,
That, without proof of any
testimony
To each indulgence they would flock
together.”
[217] By
these practices Churchianity becomes the
most powerful and by no means the least
harmful of the superstitions that shade
enlightenment, and “if the
Intelligence that keeps the stars in
motion is not maimed” the coming
centuries will displace Churchianity with
Christianity. In the matter of marriage,
church plays a baneful part in the
superstition that it is possible by a
Divine decree to join together that which
Wisdom has left asunder. When the spirit
of Christ takes the place of church in
the union of spiritually enlightened
souls, then and not till then in marriage
will
“Many jewels be found so fair and
precious
They cannot be transplanted from the
realm.”
But this can
come about, as have all great reforms,
only by individual enlightenment and the
crucifixion of personal desires, on the
white cross of universal need. By
knowledge of his divine birthright
man’s confidence in his spiritual
inheritance will dilate,
“As the sun does the rose, when
it becomes
As far unfolded as it hath the
power”
and
“in his eternity outside of
time” God will fill the measure
with divine accomplishments. The immortal
Poet beheld the Rose of Humanity in [218]
Paradise, “which under the rays of
Christ is blossoming,”
“There is the Rose, in which the
Word Divine
Becomes incarnate; there the lilies
are
By whose perfume the good way was
discovered.”
Every petal
of this rose represents individual
humanity resting in divine universality,
individuality in union with universality.
The humanity of mankind is the mirror in
which the divinity of God is reflected,
and God has joined the humanity of man to
His own divinity “by the sole act
of His eternal love.” That which
God has joined Churchianity would put
asunder, and that which God has not
joined it would hold indissolubly
together.
The soul of
every brute and every plant “by its
potential temperament attracts the ray
and motion of the whole light of
Divinity,” and thus all creation is
one in Christ Jesus. In the poetical
comparison of the ivy and the oak, sight
has been lost of the vine’s
suffocating embrace of the stalwart tree.
If the clinging ivy is left to itself it
causes the decay of the royal oak. In the
application of this aspect of nature to
marriage it suffices to say that mutual
independence is necessary to the
soul’s spiritual development.
Feminine despotism has no more place in
marriage than has tyrannical autocracy or
hypochondriacal affection. The
“Tyranny of Tears,” [219] is
no more commendable than “The
Tyranny of Threats.”
To paint a
masterpiece the artist requires all the
glaring colors spread on his palette.
Even so marriage requires all the tints
of love, but, like the colors on the
palette, the vivid tints must be blended
by wisdom and intelligence before the
picture may be painted. When women learn
to devote themselves to the soul
interests of their husbands, they will
rise above petty jealousies and
meaningless trivialities and prove
themselves helpmates of men. The home is
a good man’s blessed trinity, and
therefore it needs must become a
consecrated hermitage, “wont to be
dedicated to worship only,” of the
real, the good, and the true. Man does
but need to apprehend the Truth in order
to direct his feet toward it, and the
good wife is his best spiritual guide
into the paths of peace. By reason of his
inherent divinity man is consecrated to
the good.
“’Tis sin alone which doth
disfranchise him
And render him unlike the Good
Supreme.
. . . . . . . . . .
But infinite Goodness hath such ample
arms
That it receives whatever turns to
it.”
When a
man’s needs expand beyond the reach
of his mother, he seeks a wife. The
intuition of [220] the woman must divine
that what the man needs is the unique
combination of a wife and mother, or the
wisdom of spiritual motherhood blended
with the exalted love of rich womanhood.
To meet his need, a wife must divest her
mind of selfishness and use the same tact
and gentle forbearance with her
husband’s idiosyncrasies that
wisdom would suggest in the case of a
sick child.
The wife
must always bear in mind that in the
hand-to-hand struggle for existence a
man’s soul is exposed to the
contagion of vice, while his heart is
bared to the wounds of business
corruption. A woman must distill from her
own soul the anodyne, and form in her
heart the spiritual ointment which is to
heal the wounds of the man with whom she
has cast her lot. And these remedies must
be applied so gently that the patient
will not be conscious of their
application. The office of the wife is to
be Mother, Instructor, and Soul Physician
all in one, but God has graciously fitted
her to fill this responsible post. It
only requires that she rise to her divine
calling. Children of God arise, and
“Run to the mountain to strip off
the slough,
That lets not God be manifest to
you...
The heavens are calling you, and wheel
around you,
Displaying to you their eternal
beauties,
And still your eye is looking on the
ground.”
[221] In
marriage “no sophist’s
subtlety would there find place” if
men and women realized the importance of
honesty in their partnership, for any
compact into which dishonesty enters is
morally annulled. Marriage should
illuminate love instead of concealing it,
and it would if the same modesty and
constancy characterized the more profound
relationship that waits upon an ideal
wooing. After marriage, both husband and
wife should rise to the ideal standard
that is required to establish a noble
parentage in order that their progeny may
not have reason to weep for their
parents’ crimes of omission or
commission. The formation of a new race
is requisite for the redemption of the
world. Let the knowledge of this
universal need penetrate the mind and
heart of such men and women as
contemplate the blending of their highest
interests in a hallowed union, and these
are they who will be prepared to assume
and maintain their divine responsibility
towards God and the universe, the
propagation of a more spiritual race.
Jesus turned the colorless water of
personal existence into the rich wine of
a spiritual unity. This is symbolic of
the true marriage. In the presence of
adversity it is well to remember that it
is the rod of discipline that prepares
humanity for the staff of spiritual
comfort. Sorrow is the sepulchre of false
trust and material hopes.
“Who never ate his bread in
sorrow
Who never spent the midnight oil
Weeping and waiting for the
morrow
He knows not you, you heavenly
powers.”
[222] From
the ashes of burned-out sorrow come forth
divine enterprises which, by the spirit
of God, have illuminated the world with
the effulgence of their brightness. The
resurrection was wrought in a tomb by a
Man who would have been alone in the dark
had not the spirit of God illuminated his
sepulchre.
Marriage is
a trinity in unity ordained by God and it
is the only legal institution that bears
the seal of Divine approval. Hence in the
holy state of the spiritual union of
souls dedicated to the service of
humanity,
“All suspicion needs must be
abandoned,
All cowardice must needs be here
extinct.”
Marriage is
the sanctuary set apart for the
propagation of gods through love, which
is the vestment of spiritual union,
and
“As long as the festivity of
Paradise shall be,
So long our love
Shall radiate round about us
Such a vesture.”
Next: Horoscopes
*
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The Astor Lectures
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
