HAPPY MARRIAGES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 104, 2 April 1929, Page 8

HAPPY MARRIAGES

LADY FERGUSSON’S ADVICE. CHRISTCHURCH, April 2. Practical suggestions for dealing with the problem ol divorce in New Zealand are made by Lady Alice Fergusson, the Dominion president of the Mothers' Union, in a letter which she has addressed to Mrs W. G. Roberts, the diocesan president. Lady Alice’s letter is published in the Church News. In the course of the letter she •says: “I should like to tell our members not to dwell on what I might call the negative subject of divorce, but rather to study a positive one, the achievement of happy and successful marriages. Ask them to make a point of speaking of marriage to their growing boys and girls as the opportunity shall arise, long before they come do a marrying age. Let them show their children that they look on marriage as a life-long union, and that if we as a race, as a whole nation, cease to'do so we should soon become decadent. Let them show, too, that they look on it as the greatest adventure in human happiness and also something sacred and holy, only to be entered into with the help of the Church and God’s blessing. ‘•’When the children are themselves at last on the threshold of marriage, let it be impressed on them that not only is it a matter of happiness but a matter of duty and responsibilities and self-sacrifice as well, and that only through these ways will the and highest happiness be found. Above all, let the mothers try and show their children by their own example what successful married life is. _ The best way, after all, to show children the sanctity of marriage is to live that sanctity, before their eyes.”