THE MARRIAGE SERVICE EXPLAINED. Especially for the use of those who are about to be married. IF you wish to derive profit from the Marriage Service in which you are about to join, you should read it over carefully and seriously beforehand. We cannot fully enter into any thing which is new and strange to us; and if you have never given any thought to this holy and beautiful service of our Church, instead of throwing your whole heart and soul into it, you will be probably fussing yourself about the outward part of it; you will be wanting to know where you are to stand, what you are to answer, when you are to receive or give the ring, how you are to behave. Your thoughts will be wasted on these lesser things. Let us then as it were sit down together, and opening our Prayer-books, carefully study the Service in which you hope so soon to be taking part. And first of all observe, after the mode of calling banns has been noticed, that "the persons to be married" are to "come into the body of the Church with their friends and neighbours." Into the holy House of God you are to come, into your Saviour's presence, that you may do this act holily, religiously, in the fear of God, in a Christian spirit, drawing near to God Himself, seeking to be joined together by God Himself through the hands of His ministers, who are, as the Apostle witnesses, "in Christ's stead," His deputies on earth. As a Christian you do go to any worldly place to get married; it is not a worldly act; you are not joined together by persons of a worldly calling, by ordinary men, but by the "stewards of the mysteries of Christ." And thus seeking God in so important an action of your life, you enter His courts with your "friends and neighbours;" you seek their prayers, their sympathy at such a time, that their souls may be joined with yours in asking a blessing upon your marriage. not Having taken your places, the man on the right hand and the woman on the left, that position signifying the higher place of the man, the Priest begins the Service with words of solemn, affectionate exhortation. A very solemn view is given of marriage in this exhortation; Christ's minister, His Priest in the sanctuary, declares first of all that he and the congregation are gathered together in God's sight, and in God's sight he calls matrimony a holy estate, a state holy in itself, holy as being the ordinance of God, designed to promote holiness and godliness in them that are married. He declares it also to be an honourable state, "ordained by God in the time of man's innocency, so that our thoughts are carried back to that first marriage when Adam and Eve were unstained by sin, when there was no sin, no sorrow, no death. He tells us that it signifies unto us the mystical union that is "betwixt Christ and His Church," that it was "adorned and beautified with His presence and first miracle that He wrought in Cana of Galilee." Having thus declared how holy, how honourable a state it is designed by God to be, he warns us not to enter it in an unholy, unserious, careless frame of mind, merely to gratify our baser passions; for that were to dishonour ourselves before God, to be no better than "brute beasts that have no understanding," to act a vile and carnal part at a very solemn time; he beseeches us to enter it "reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God," most godly and kindly counsel, which many greatly need who plunge into marriage without thought or seriousness, who seek it lightly, wantonly, without any fear of God, without any earnest desire or wish that it may further their salvation and help them on their way to heaven. That we may be more deeply impressed with the seriousness and spiritual importance of such an act, the Clergyman is made to shew the causes for which matrimony was ordained, each cause giving an argument for its being done in the fear of God. First, as the Service tells us, "it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord and to the praise of His holy Name." Surely this cause, if it were rightly considered, would be enough to create a sober thoughtful frame of mind in those who seek to be married. They seek to be instruments of bringing children into the world, children hereafter to be in heaven or hell, children with living souls, who hereafter shall be among the angels or the devils, lost or saved, pardoned or condemned, most joyful or most wretched. Can it be a light thing to seek to be a parent? Is it a light responsibility? Should we dance forward without thought or care when the everlasting interests of souls yet unborn hang upon us? May we not well say to ourselves, "What will it be if the children born unto us. should not be rightly trained, if we should fail to rear their souls in the ways of our God, or if through our want of seriousness they should grow up in a careless way and perish." No one can think of a parent's tremendous responsibilities without being led to feel that marriage is not a step to be taken in a light and thoughtless way; but that if God's blessing is to be upon it, it must be done reverently and in the fear of God. Think of this matter, my friend, most earnestly. "Secondly," the Prayer-book goes on to tell us "it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." Surely this also puts marriage in a very solemn light it is "a remedy against sin," it is something designed by God to check sin, the sin of the body, that the bodies of the baptized which are temples of the Holy Ghost may be preserved holy, pure, and unstained. Treat it therefore as an act which is ordained by God to promote personal holiness, bodily purity, that we may con : |