You are standing beside your bride, and close to the clergyman who is facing you. Six or eight bridesmaids, sometimes young girls twelve or fifteen years old, are grouped behind the bride. Breaking the profound silence, the minister thus addresses you, not in Latin, but in plain English: “Dearly beloved brethren, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony; which is an honourable estate ... not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained.” And then he goes on to say that it was ordained for the procreation of children, for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.
That is how the ball opens. It is promising, is it not? You would give the world to sink through the floor, or to be able to seize your dear little wife, and fill her ears with cotton wool. You blush, as you think of the sweet creatures in white, blue, and pink, who are just behind you biting their lips, and wondering what those brute beasts, that have no understanding, have to do with the ceremony, and you feel ready to fall on your knees and implore the forgiveness of the innocent young girl at your side, for having brought her there to hear such things. And that which strikes you with wonder, nay, with amazement, is that just after, when the minister says to her, “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband ... wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health?” she does not indignantly exclaim:
“No, indeed, not for the world!”
Thus have the English, in their rigid puritanism, managed to spoil a ceremony that might, and ought, to remain engraven on the memory among life’s sweetest souvenirs.
And yet, what beautiful words might be said to young couples, and that, without going out of the Bible for them: the Bible, that finest monument of English prose, so poetical at times, so grand, yet so melodious always! Never was woman painted in colours so poetical; never were her duties traced with such a masterly hand as by the famous King of the Hebrews; and one might extract from the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon a most charming lecture to be addressed to young couples presenting themselves at the altar.
The language of the English Bible is incomparably superior to that of the Bible in any other idiom. It is like music, like trumpet blasts. With the exception of the finest passages of Bossuet, I know nothing, even in our splendid prose, that could be compared with this great national epic.
The foregoing remarks on the Bible will perhaps give pleasure to the English; not that I wrote them with any such intention: it is simply the exact truth.
Plenty of people in England do without the religious ceremony. They are not free-thinkers, for that; they are merely worthy people quite orthodox, but who prefer the civil marriage as being more simple.
They present themselves at the registrar’s office. No need to produce any papers: the bridegroom gives his name and surname, as well as those of the young girl he means to marry; the couple declare their ages, in the presence of two witnesses, and state whether they are spinster and bachelor, or whether either or both have been through the ceremony of marriage before. The registrar’s book is signed, and there is an end of the matter. By means of a licence, that may be obtained at Doctors’ Commons for the sum of two guineas, the trouble of having one’s banns published may be avoided.
It is scarcely necessary to add that, when the parents give consent to the marriage of their children, the ceremony generally takes place in church; but the registrar is a great resource, when the parents are so cruel as to stand in the way of the young folks’ happiness.