THE NET OF MARRIAGE.
The Rev. Harry Jones, writing in the Sunday at Home, says: ‘Some people, especially if they marry young and on the impulse of some taking fancy, without a due consideration of the very grave nature of the state they are entering, discover afterwards that his or her mate does not come up to the expectations which had been formed. The light and laughing love of the marriage and the early periods of married life are succeeded by a sense of disappointment. Then comes domestic indifference, perhaps recrimination. Both man and wife are deceived, and undeceived. Unintentionally perhaps, but really. Both feel, as it were, entangled. They have married in haste, and repent too often, not at leisure, but with mutual bitterness and ill-concealed unconcern for one another. Each generally thinks the other most to blame. And I do not believe that I am overstepping the limits of appropriate language when I say that the idea of being caught in a net represents their secret convictions. Here is a disastrous state of affairs. In this country, such a net cannot be easily broken. The pair have married for worse, in a more serious sense than these words are intended to bear in the marriage vows. What is to be done? I should very imperfectly express my advice if I simply said, “Make the best of it.” For though this is a rude rendering of the advice needed, much might be said to show how this can be done after a Christian way.... It is a great Christian rule that, to be loved, we must show kindness and consideration, and not expect to receive what we do not grant ourselves. “Give,” says Christ, “and it shall be given unto you. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.” And if this applies anywhere, it applies most in the case of those who are in the close relationship of husband and wife. Clouds sometimes come over the married life because too much consideration is expected. Show it, I would say, rather than demand it, if it has seemed to come short. Do not think to mend matters by a half-grudging endurance, but ask God to give His sacred help to the keeping of the rule “bear and forbear.” So may a hasty marriage, the beauty of which has been spoilt by some misunderstandings, ripen into the true affection which should mark this holy estate, and the cloud of disappointment give place to a love which rests upon no passing fancy, but upon an honest Christian observance between man and wife of the vow betwixt them made. So may the miserable afterthought of having been entangled in a relationship be blotted out, and succeeded, as years go on, by a love cemented with the desire to do right before God, in whose presence, and with prayer for whose blessing, the relationship was begun.’