arose; such for instance, as the one
here started. When of two heathen parties only one was converted to
Christianity, the question arose, What in this case is the duty of the
Christian? Is not the duty separation? Is not the marriage in itself
null and void? as if it were an union between one dead and one living?
And that perpetual contact with a heathen, and therefore an enemy of
God, is not that in a relation so close and intimate, perpetual
defilement? The apostle decides this with his usual inspired wisdom.
He decides that the marriage-bond is sacred still. Diversities of
religious opinion, even the farthest and widest diversity, cannot
sanction separation. And so he decides in the 13th verse, "The woman
which hath an husband that believeth not, if he be pleased to dwell
with her, let her not leave him." And, "if any brother hath a wife
that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not
put her away," v. 12.

Now for us in the present day, the decision on this point is not of so
much importance as the reason which is adduced in support of it. The
proof which the Apostle gives of the sanctity of the marriage is
exceedingly remarkable. Practically it amounts to this;--If this were
no marriage, but an unhallowed alliance, it would follow as a
necessary consequence that the offspring could not be reckoned in any
sense as the children of God; but, on the other hand, it is the
instinctive, unwavering conviction of every Christian parent, united
though he or she may be to a heathen, "My child is a child of God,"
or, in the Jewish form of expression, "My child is _clean_." So the
apostle says, "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and
the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your
children unclean; but now they are holy," for it follows if the
children are holy in this sense of dedicated to God, and are capable
of Christian relationship, then the marriage relation was not
unhallowed, but sacred and indissoluble.

The value of this argument in the present day depends on its relation
to baptism. The great question we are deciding in the present day may
be reduced to a very few words. This question--the Baptismal
question--is this:--whether we are baptized because we _are_ the
children of God, or, whether we are the children of God because we are
_baptized_; whether in other words, when the Catechism of the Church
of England says that