NOVEL MARRIAGE.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14726, 3 August 1921, Page 8

NOVEL MARRIAGE.

NO “GIVING AWAY.” A wedding at which tlie bride and bridegroom sat in, easy chairs while a benign gentleman in black and crimson, who had pronounced them man and wife, read a homily on the ideal marriage, was a novel ceremony attended by tho “£?unday Pictorial” in London recently. The scene was the Ethical Chtirch in Bnyswater, where tho lecturer, Mr. R-- Dimsdale Stocks, is authorised by Somerset House to conduct marriages. , Mr. 'Cuthbert Harry Clark and Miss Mary Bridget Eyres were the parties concerned, and afterwards the bridegroom gave his views on the cerenujny.”

“I have been a member of the Ethical Church, which was founded twenty-five years ago, for just half that period,” he said. “I think this marriage ceremony a perfect one. It covers all the ground from the religious, ethical and practical pionts of view. “Unnecessary things are left out. For instance, I did not think ,it necessary to get a vow of obedience from my life partner, nor did she require me to make a public disposition of my wordlv goods.” The ceremony began with the following lines from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:— Let me not to tho carriage of true minds Admit; impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. “A marriage is no mere ceremony,” went on the service. “But it is far more thap a symbol. It is an essential factor in their—the parties—own and the world’s history.” The bride and groom plighted their troth in the following formula: “With these rings we wed each other pledging ourselves in honour to prefer each other’s good and together to live for the cominon good.” After the reading •of the homily, this final benediction was pronounced:— “The blessing of the Just and Merciful, your own love of righteousness and the Eternal Order of Things, be your strength and peace unto the end” There were no bridesm;yds, no best man or groomsman, and the bride was not “given away.”