Marriage is honorable in all.--_Hebr. 13, 4._
"And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." These words of Holy Scripture immediately following the statement: "And God created man in His image, male and female created He them," contain the divine verdict regarding the social relation that we call matrimony or marriage. Declared the all-wise God: "It was very good."
That, however, was in the holy and happy days of Paradise, in the midst of righteousness, purity, and bliss. Sin entered, and things changed; the image of the divine Maker was forfeited, that purity effaced, over that bliss was written in indelible letters: "Paradise Lost." What, then, became of the marriage relation? Was it, too, dissolved, forfeited, lost? Wonderful Providence! From that universal wreck,--of the few things which God permitted man to carry with him, remains, to insure him happiness and welfare in the midst of a world otherwise steeped in misery and tears, the marriage estate. It was not lost.
The Gospel-lesson of to-day presents the Savior as being present at a marriage feast, and records that on that occasion He changed water into wine and manifested forth His glory. By His presence and by that miracle He also manifested forth, endorsed, sanctioned, and placed His divine approbation upon matrimony, as He once did amid the scenes of Eden's creation and loveliness. Nothing could be more significant than that, when the God-man came to found His kingdom upon earth, and entered upon His Messianic work, His first work should have been wrought in honor of the wedding tie. And so God's Word speaks of marriage throughout. When the Apostle desires a comparison to set forth the holy and pure relation between Christ and His Church, he knows none more sublime and noble than the union that exists between man and woman in wedlock, for which reason the Church is called Christ's bride--Christ is called her Bridegroom.
To raise one's tongue or pen in impiety or censure against marriage is to raise them against heaven and Christ. To set up in its place the teaching and practice of celibacy, by which men and women are divested, in the name of religion, from the ties and duties of family; to turn away, or in any manner to advocate what may break down the proper relation between the sexes, is casting reproach upon God's institution, and a perversion of true religion, as it is of nature's laws. To speak depreciatingly, disparagingly of marriage, to arch the brow, to puck the lips up in a smile, when it is called "holy" matrimony, and in any way to entertain light and derogatory views concerning it and family life, is to get oneself into conflict with, and to invite the ill favor of, Him who has thrown a sacred hedge around the institution, when on Sinai's mountain, in His Ten Commandments, He commanded how we should regard this estate.