ADVICE ON MARRIAGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 18

ADVICE ON MARRIAGE.

“ MARVELLOUS PARTNERSHIP.” A remarkable pastoral letter on Christian marriage, from the Bishop of Chichester, addressed to those who desire to be married in ariy %hurch or chapel of the Church of England in the County of Sussex, in the New Year issue of the Chichester Diocesan Gazette. The Bishop said: — “ Marriage is the happiest of all human experiences for the man or the woman who enters into it with the right-partner in the right spirit. I trust that you have each made your choice of the other for this wonderful new life together with consideration and prayer. . . _ “First, let me say this. Marriage, like every great enterprise in life, makes a very serious demand on those who embark upon it. At this moment each of you thinks the other a very wonderful being. You do right. But each is human, and with the long life together to which you look forward it does not do to forget that. Nothing really worth while can be done without effort. “Marriage is a calling which asks for constant and unselfish effort. It is a calling for the whole of life, and not a little temporary affair to be taken up and then put down as a passing fancy or selfish pleasure dictates. But if there is that effort, and a real unselfishness all life long, marriage becomes a marvellous partnership, both doubling your joys and halving your troubles! “You are asking to be married in church, and by that very act you admit special obligations by which you are bound as Christians. The marriage service of the church is definitely intended for those who accept the teaching of Jesus Christ. It is a very solemn service, very solemnly performed between the man and the woman in the sight of God. “ At the centre of the service come the solemn and binding vows which each makes to the other, that the one takes the other ‘ for better for worse . . . till death us do part.’ . . . “Read these vows, read them again, and think about them and all that they mean. Don’t take them idly. It is clear that the vow taken by each party to the marriage is for life, whatever may happen in the future. Thus it is ‘ for better for worse,’ even if one of the parties proves unfaithful to the other or it turns out in the course of time that husband and wife prove wholly unsuited to each other. “ Again, ‘ for richer for poorer ’ includes the total loss of material possessions. 'ln sickness and in health ’ includes the possibility that one of the parties may become incurably ill in body or in mind. “ ‘ Till death us do part' implies that until one of the parties dies the other is not free, for any cause whatsoever, to take another partner. “ Once you have taken such vows you are bound, as an honourable man or woman, to keep them at all costs. If you are not both honest or settled in. your resolve to maintain them for life; if you are among those who think that marriage is merely) an experiment, and that if it does not answer it can be brought to an end, I beg you do not come to be married in church. “To take vows you ar* not absolutely determined to keep is ” iking a mockery alike of marriage and o. the service and of its witnesses in church. “ Those who are not prepared to regard marriage as the Church regards it can obtain legal sanction for their union by being married at a registry office, “ Even marriage before the registrar is a binding ceremony not to be lightly set aside, but the service in church puts before you the meaning of Christian marriage, and no Act of Parliament can alter its character —no man-made law can free from their vows a man and a woman who have solemnly pledged themselves before God to be true to one another, ‘ till deSth us do part.’ “ You will find that the recollection ot your solemn vows will help you mightily to meet the inevitable rubs of married life in a right spirit. . . The Bishop added some advice regarding the responsibilities of parenthood which he described as “The Glory of Married Life.” ,