It really seems sometimes as if pains were positively taken to mislead those who are going to be married. One of the most amazing statements on this subject, for instance, is contained in the marriage service of the Church of England, where the bride and bridegroom are told that marriage was ordained that "such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." That there should be anyone in the twentieth century who does not know that a man or a woman who has not the gift of continency is totally unfit for marriage is really rather startling. What such a person requires is both a divine and a physician; but that he should be told that he is fit for marriage and that marriage was expressly designed for him is not only misleading, it is absolutely horrifying. It explains the tragic wreck which so many marriages become after a comparatively short time.
I would urge, then, for the future, that we should not concentrate all our moral, ethical, religious, and social force on perpetuating the tragic failure of an empty marriage, but, rather, should concentrate our efforts on trying to make people understand what marriage is; what their own natures are; what marriage is going to demand from them; what they need in order to make it noble. I urge, moreover, that the same principle should apply to those who do not marry—that they also should learn in the light what their difficulties are going to be; how to face their own temperaments; how to deal with their own minds and bodies. Your temperament, men and women, does not decide your destiny; it does decide your trials. To know how to deal with it and how to make it your servant, how so to enthrone spiritual power in your nature that it shall dominate all that is physical, not as something base, but as a sacred and a consecrated thing—it is on this that the teachers of to-day should concentrate with all their power. It is true that when we have learnt all that is possible from teaching, there is still something to learn. In marriage is it possible to know finally until the final step is taken? No, I do not think so. But when you consider how we have struggled against ignorance, how many pitfalls have been put in the path of those who desired knowledge, how we have, as it seems, done our best to make this relationship a failure, surely it is worth while, at least, to try what knowledge, and understanding, and education, and training can do. We cannot know all. That is no reason why we should not know all that we can.
Surely marriage must be a divine institution, since we have done so much to make it a failure, and yet one sees again and again such splendid love, such magnificent loyalty and faith! "You advocate," someone wrote to me the other day, "you advocate that people should leave each other when they are tired of each other." No, I do not advocate that anyone should accept a failure. I advocate that every human being should do all that is possible—more perhaps than is possible without the grace of God—to make marriage the noble and lovely thing it should be. I think those are faint-hearted who easily accept the fact that it is difficult, and from that drift swiftly to the conclusion that for them it is impossible. I advocate that the greatest faith and loyalty should be practised. I believe in my heart that there is perhaps no relationship which cannot be redeemed by the love and devotion and the grace of God in the hearts of those who seek to make it redeemable. What I do say is that in Church and State we should concentrate all our efforts on helping men and women to a wise, enlightened, noble conception of marriage before they enter upon it, and not on a futile and immoral attempt to hold them together by a mere legal contract when all that made it valid has fled.
I believe that the more one knows of human nature the more one reverences it. I believe that the vast majority of human beings strain every nerve rather than fail in so great a responsibility. Do you remember reading in Mr. Bertrand Russell's book, "Principles of Social Reconstruction," of a little church of which it was discovered, not, I think, very long ago, that, owing to some defect in its title, marriages which had been celebrated there were not legal? Mr. Bertrand Russell says that there were at that time I forget how many couples still living who had been married in that church, who found that, by this legal defect, they were not legally bound. Do you know how many of those married people seized the opportunity to desert each other and go and marry somebody else? Not a single one! Every one of those couples went quietly away to church and got married again!
Religious people do sometimes think such mean things of human nature, and human nature is, for the most part, so much nobler, so much more loyal, so much more loving than we imagine. "Lift up your eyes unto the hills from whence cometh your help." "He that walketh in the light, stumbleth not, for he seeth the light of the world."
Let us face the future courageously, with great reverence for other people's opinions and views. Let us not join that mob of shouters who are prepared to howl at everyone who desires to say something that is not quite orthodox, but which is their serious and considered contribution to a great and difficult problem. Let us greet them with respect, however much we may differ from them. Let us look forward without fear. Believe me, below all the froth and scum of which we make so much, human nature is very noble.
Let us give that example to the world which is worth a thousand arguments—the example of a noble married life, the example of a noble single life. Those of you who are alone can do infinitely more for virtue by being full of gentleness, wisdom, sanity, and love than by any harsh repression of yourselves. It is by what you can make of celibacy that the world will judge celibacy. And so of married lovers. Believe me, it is not the children of married lovers who are rebels against a lofty standard. Those who have seen with their eyes a lovely, faithful and unwavering love are not easily satisfied with anything that is less. "Lift up your eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh your strength." And in the light of a great ideal, in the light of knowledge, sincerity and truth, in the light of what I know of human nature, I, for one, am not afraid for the future moral standard of this country.
VII
FRIENDSHIP
"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Oh Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" (II. Sam. i. 23-27.)