e shall see clearly that the marriage-service is but a symbol.
Like baptism, it is a worthless and meaningless rite unless the man and
the woman have been born again into the Spirit, released from the law.
If they are still, as St. Paul would say, in the flesh, let them have,
if they wish, a civil permit to live together, for the Spirit can have
nothing to do with such an union. True to herself, the Church symbolizes
the union of her members, the reborn. She has nothing to do with laws
and conventions which are supposedly for the good of society, nor is any
union accomplished if those whom she supposedly joins are not reborn.
If they are, the Church can neither make it or dissolve it, but merely
confirm and acknowledge the work of the Spirit. And every work of the
Spirit is a sacrament. Not baptism and communion and marriage only, but
every act of life.

"Oh, John," she exclaimed, her eyes lighting, "I can believe that! How
beautiful a thought! I see now what is meant when it is said that man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God. That is the hourly guidance which is independent of
the law. And how terrible to think that all the spiritual beauty of
such a religion should have been hardened into chapter and verse
and regulation. You have put into language what I think of Mr.
Bentley,--that has acts are sacraments.... It is so simple when you
explain it this way. And yet I can see why it was said, too, that we
must become as children to understand it."

"The difficult thing," replied Holder, gravely, "is to retain it, to
hold it after we have understood it--even after we have experienced
it. To continue to live in the Spirit demands all our effort, all our
courage and patience and faith. We cannot, as you say, promise to love
for life. But the marriage service, interpreted, means that we will use
all our human endeavour, with the help of the Spirit, to remain in what
may be called the reborn state, since it is by the Spirit alone that
true marriage is sanctified. When the Spirit is withdrawn, man and woman
are indeed divorced.

"The words 'a sense of duty' belong to moral philosophy and not to
religion. Love annuls them. I do not mean to decry them, but the reborn
are lifted far above them by the subversion of the will by which our
will is submitted to God's. It is so we develop, and become, as it
were, God. And hence those who are not married in the Spirit are not
spi