IDEAL OF MARRIAGE

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1931, Page 13

IDEAL OF MARRIAGE

'A BISHOP’S PROPOSAL. SERVICE OF BETROTHAL. A “sacred service of betrothal” to bring a better realisation to young people of the sanctity, the beauty and the responsibilities of marriage was suggested by Dr. Pollock, the Bishop of Norwich, speaking at the wedding on September 17 of Lady Helena Rous (daughter of the Earl and Countess of Stradbroke) and Major Beresford-Ash, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. “The whole marriage service,” Dr. Pollock said, “the oldest and least altered part of our English Prayer Book, containing some of the oldest English that we know, lifts up our hearts and puts before us, as the pattern of married life, the mutual love of Christ and His Church. This is the ideal after which we rejoice to strive, and it is the ideal which brings a sense not merely of failure, but of shame, to any whose married life is not worthy of the heavenly example. ’ “Most of those who to-day write and speak about marriage speak about marriage failures. Some day, perhaps, we shall find the older people more ready to instruct the young as to the meaning of marriage at its best, and as to the way to reach it. Too often young people set out upon their married life without any careful thought beforehand—carelessly, heedlessly, not knowing what is 'in front of them, and sometimes with more of passion than secure affection rising in their hearts, or only hoping to have a good time in a. self-centred life without responsibility. “Too many are those who have not even taken the trouble to read through the marriage .service before they meet it for the first time in the church. A sacred service of betrothal might help in this direction. “But what would help more is that every young man and every girl, before they start to be married, should have made sure that they are friends at heart, ■ with a deep, true friendship that will I grow with the years. Close companionship .must never fall to the level of mere I goodwill, or lower still. It is only in ! this confident expectation of a growing I union and growing affection, widening ’ out as life widens out before them, that

I they can dare to take life-long vows, j -‘But if they are in this way sure of I themselves and sure of one another, they I will with God’s blessing upon them not hesitate to pledge their mutua' trust and love to one another for ever and ever, with no idea of any break ‘till death us do part.’ “It is a wretched atmosphere for young people to find themselves in if "the books they read and the talk of older people round them always fixes on the meanness, the wretchedness, the caricatures of unhappy marriage, and on the ignominious ways of release from its hated rows.” "