joined together let no man put asunder." Did God join
those two together? They were married in a church. It is the Church that
should repent in sackcloth and ashes for permitting such a mockery of
marriage. Let the Church by all means do what it has so long failed to do,
emphasize the sanctity of human relationships, make men and women realize
how deep a responsibility they take in marriage, how sacred a thing is this
creative love, from which future generations will spring, which brings into
the world human bodies and immortal souls; which, even if it is childless,
is still the very sacrament of human love. Let the Church teach all that
it can to make marriage sacred and divine, but when it preaches that such a
marriage as that is a marriage at all it does not uphold our moral standard
but degrades it.

I have said enough before, I hope, to make you realize that I do not think
that when passion has gone marriage is dead. I have seen marriages which
seemed unequal, difficult, unblest, made into something lovely and sacred
by the deep patience and loyalty of human nature, and believe it is the
knowledge of such possibilities which makes Christian people, and even
those who would not call themselves Christians, generally desire some
religious ceremony when they are married. They know that for such love
human nature itself is hardly great enough. They desire the grace of God
to inspire their love for each other with something of that eternal quality
which belongs to the love of God. I have seen husbands love their wives,
and wives their husbands, with a divine compassion, an inexhaustible pity,
which goes out to the most unworthy and degraded. Yes, I would even go
so far as to say that unless you feel that you are able to face the
possibility of change in the one you love, that you can love so well that
even if they alter for the worse your love would no more disappear than the
love of God for you would disappear when you change or fail, you have not
attained to the perfect love which justifies marriage. But this is a
hard saying, and, therefore, those of us who believe in God in any sense
instinctively desire the blessing of God to rest on the undertaking of
so great a responsibility. We want our love to be divine before we can
undertake the whole happiness of another human being. Let the Church by all
means teach this, and I believe that future generations will conceive more
nobly and more responsibly of marriage for her t