If mercenary motives are uppermost in the majority of marriages in this age and in this nation, sensuality is none the less responsible for a share of the misery attendant upon modern unions. We have already spoken of the evil of marriages founded on passion, and of the shameful way in which the colloquial adage, “Marry in haste, and repent at leisure,” is thus frequently illustrated. To this also the remedy lies in a serious Christian spirit of preparation for marriage. The root of all evil developments in the relations between the sexes lies in the early education of the contracting parties, and it is here that the only radical cure can be tried. The church bids her children be especially circumspect at the juncture of marriage, but she also teaches them to reverence the sacrament from childhood upward as a type of the union between herself and her divine Spouse. If, as children, marriage appears to us in the shape of the angel of home, watching over the existence it has created, and dignifying the parental authority it has built up; if in youth the goal of marriage is looked forward to as the toga virilis of life, the reward of a dutiful childhood, the ennobling badge of our enrolment among the soldiers of the cross, then and only then will our country find in us efficient citizens, earnest patriots, and reliable defenders. If among men there is revived the chivalrous spirit of deference and forbearance towards women which sealed the middle ages as a charmed cycle among all divisions of time, and among women there is cultivated that generous and true womanliness which made SS. Monica and Paula, and Blanche of Castille, the typical heroines of the wedded state, then may we expect to see “a new heaven and a new earth.” Marriage means reverence for each other on the part of the persons married, as representing in themselves the sacrament typical of Christ's union with the church; it means reverence for the children who are entrusted to their care by God and their country, and whom they are bound by the solemn adjuration of Christ not to scandalize; it means reverence for themselves, as the tabernacles of a special grace and the progenitors of new worshippers at God's feet, new subjects of the kingdom of heaven. It is the woman especially who is bound to feel and express this reverence, for woman is, as the French poetically say, the priestess of the ideal. Besides, the highest perfection ever reached in the married state was reached by a woman, the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. Among married saints there have always been more women canonized than men. The women of a nation form the men; and, if marriage is to be reformed, it must be done first through the women. We hope and pray that it may soon be so, but we fear that outside the church, where the reform is, in the abstract, not needed, there is not sufficient impetus to ensure its being made. We say in the abstract, because practically there are many marriages made among Catholics, celebrated in Catholic churches, and decorously observed through the course of a blameless life, which yet call loudly for reform, and sadly lack the noble Christian spirit that made perfect the unions of Delphina and Eleazar, and of S. Louis of France and Margaret of Provence. But however deficient in some cases our practice may unhappily be, our doctrine remains ever unchanged, and our laws ever inflexible. Thanks to the church, marriage is still recognized as an act not purely animal nor yet purely civil; and, thanks to the infallibility of the church [pg 788] and her calm expectancy of eternal duration, it will remain to the end of time an honored institution. If threatened, it will still live; if derided, it will nevertheless conquer. Christian marriage is the mould in which God has chosen to throw the lava of natural passion, and without whose wholesome restraints we should have a shapeless torrent of licentiousness, scathing mankind with its poisonous breath, carrying away all landmarks of ancestry, property, and personal safety, and finally exterminating the human race long before the appointed time for the dread judgment in the Valley of Josaphat.
A Pearl Ashore.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
If one should wish to enjoy perfectly a fugue of Bach's, this is perhaps as good a way as any: listen to it on a warm afternoon, in a Gothic Protestant church, in a quiet city street, with no one present but the organist and one's self. If any other enter, let him be velvet-footed, incurious, and sympathetic. It would be better if each listener could suppose himself to be the only listener there.
The wood-work of the church is dark, glossy, and richly carved. Rose, purple, and gold-colored panes strain the light that enters, full and glowing up in the roof, but dim below. On the walls, tinted with such colors as come to us from Eastern looms, and on the canvas of the old painters, are texts in letters of dull gold—those beautiful letters that break into bud and blossom at every turn, as though alive and rejoicing over the divine thought they bear. A sunbeam here and there, too slender to illumine widely, points its finger at a word, touches a dark cushion and brings out its shadowed crimson, or glimmers across the organ pipes, binding their silver with gold, as though Light would say to Song, “With this ring I thee wed!”
Those clustered, silvery pipes are surrounded by a border of dark, lace-like carving, and a screen of the same hides the keyboards. Through this screen shines the lamp on the music-desk. Some one is stirring there. You lean back on the cushions, so that the body can take care of itself. Mentally, you are quiescent with a delightful sense of anticipation. If the situation should represent itself to you fancifully, you might say that your soul is somewhat dusty and weary, and has come down to this beach of silence for a refreshing bath. Knowing what you are to hear, watery images suggest themselves; for in the world of music it is the ocean that Bach gives us, as Beethoven gives us the winds, and Handel the stately-flowing streams.
We have made a Protestant church our music-hall, because, though not the dwelling-place of God on earth, it is often the temple of religious art, and, having nothing within it to which we can prostrate ourselves in [pg 789] adoration, it can yet, by signs and images, excite noble and religious feeling. Indeed, we would gladly banish to such concert-rooms all that music, however beautiful in itself, which intrudes on the exclusive recollection proper to the house of God.
This, we repeat, is as good a way as any to hear a fugue of John Sebastian Bach's. So also thought Miss Rothsay; and she was one who ought to know, for she was a professional singer, and as sensitive musically as well could be.
It was an afternoon in early September, and she had only the day before reached her native city, after a prolonged residence abroad. Hers had been that happy lot which seems to be the privilege of the artist: her work, her duty, and her delight were the same. That which she must and ought to do she would have chosen above all things as her recreation. Now, with a perfected voice, and a will to use truly and nobly that gracious power, she had returned to her native land.