Text:
Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Exodus 20, 14.
S we study the law given through Moses, we find that blessings are promised in return for obedience, but heavy penalties who, in a single life, have exhibited man and a wor a beauty and a strength of c! character unapproached by the vast majority but most of us require rar age to redeem us from selfishness and to develop in us tender ne: and un standing. and the secret of li ving of for ourselves, but for another: r. Thi life must be seen as a place for the training an ment of character and th ships of married life offer scope for are threatened for the law breaker. Now, the first four cow- ino development of those perfection: mandments assert in various forms the unity, spirituality and o; love and self-sacrifice which are greatness of God and since the very purpose for which the Jewish the highest of human attriou state existed was to reveal and maintain these great truths con- Marriage should manifest a pablo cerning God and His relation to mankind, we can understand CoPendence of the severity of the penalty.
These great fundamental laws were ship of strength over weak: es. Tt safeguarded for that and succeeding generations by making viola-requires sell-renunciation on the tion of them a capital crime. but that the same tremendous part of each for wel of the
sanctions sustain the fifth, sixth and seventh commandments, laws other, which is the perfection of disinterested love It engages principle governing human relationships. seem more difficult to understand. and honour to sustain mere in-Surely it is to teach us the im-severe than that which vindicates otherwise be the mere 7 clination, and raises what would portance of the place they occupy in the majesty of God. So too, there is an hour into a permanent devotion the divine revelation—that there is a a divine idea to be fulfilled in mar-divine idea to be fulülled in the re- ried life. In all the office of mutual lations between parents and children love and service which it creates—in 7
drawing attention to the fact that the Possible—and, therefore, marr making that relationship sacred. all the happiness which it renders} ment: Let us rati s return to the command-"Thou shalt to th not commit relation of the parent and the child sacred too. adultery."
In its form. like most of God, and that in the home. and, skin to that between humanity and arity Marriage a Divine Institution astrains external acts which violate the other commandment nly under parental discipline are to be a very real and definite the divine idea upon which the com-developed. not only the social and marriage is a divine institution, The|mandment rests, but we shall only ores!ic virtues, but reverence and! law and the prophets, and the New insure the keeping of the com-devotion to God; and similarly that Testament set their seal to the cor-mandment as w teach and keep ever there is a divine idea to be fulfilled rectness of the teaching contained in the lofty conception of in the character and history of every he old story of Genesis two. Indeed of which I have been individual life—this explains the it might be argued that marriage is si ud which is the aim of inviolability and the sacredness in- essential to the highest development our Church of England teaching. dicated by the fact that human life of human mature.
I is true that Marriage, according to our Prayer is protected by a penalty no less|there have been men and women Book. is the joining together of a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.