Marriages of Saints and Sinner.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 914, 6 September 1889, Page 4

Marriages of Saints and Sinner.

It is to be observed that the saints are always, or almost always, unmarried. If either husband or wife is filled with the ambition to be a saint, misery is assured. Christian deserted Mrs Christian and the children. It was a mean act, but what was he to do ? What is any one to do who feels a vocation for perfection, after marrying, inauother mood, as one who plays tipcat, drinks beer, and dances with the girls ? This is a fruitful source of unhappiness in married life ; it matters not whether you take the case of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, or of the second wife of the elder Weller. Where one. partner is a saint and the other a ‘ weasel,’ happiness flies out of the door. We are usually invited to sympathise with the ‘wessel/ but I am not certain that the saint does not as much deserve our compassion. In other cases the saintliness is common to both partners, but the pattern of excellence differs. Then we have the woful predicament of Rlra Elsmere, who was good, but on the old lines, while the Rev. Elsmere was good, too, but ‘ advanced ’ —a reader of Strauss and Renan and Lang, in North American Review for June.