Courtship

Courtship

( Originally Published 1879 )

ALL the blessedness, all the utility, efficacy, and happiness of the married state, depends upon its truth fulness, or the wisdom of the union. Marriage is not necessarily a blessing. It may be the bitterest curse. It may sting like an adder and bite like a serpent. Its bower is as often made of thorns as of roses. It blasts as many sunny expectations as it realizes. Every improper marriage is a living misery, an undying death. Its bonds are grated bars of frozen iron. It is a spirit prison, cold as the dungeon of ruin. An illy-mated human pair is the most woeful picture of human wretchedness that is presented in the book of life; and yet, such pictures are plenty. Every page we turn gives us a view of some such living bondage. But a _proper marriage, a true interior, soul-linked union is a living picture of blessedness, unrivaled in beauty. A true marriage is the soul's Eden. It is the portal of heaven. It is the visiting-place of angels. It is the charm indescribable of a spirit in captivation with all imaginable beauty and loveliness. It is a constant peace-offering, that procures a continual Sabbath day sweetness, rich as the quietude of reposing angels. It is not given to words to express the refinement of pleasure, the delicacy of joy and the abounding fullness of satisfaction that those feel whom God hath joined in a high marriage of spirit. Such a union is the highest school of virtue, the soul's convent, where the vestal fires of purity are kept continually burning.

Marriage, then, should be made a study. Every youth, both male and female, should so consider it. It is the grand social institution of humanity. Its laws Ind relations are of momentous importance to the race. Shall it be entered blindly, in total ignorance of what it is, what its conditions of happiness are?

"Marriage is a lottery," exclaim so many men and women you meet. And why is it so? Simply because courtship is a grand scheme of...