And surely no one who believes in a Church, or has any love for that Communion of Saints by which all the members of Christ's Body rejoice and mourn together over the acts of their great salvation-no one who so believes and feels will, without most urgent necessity, choose or even be a party to the choice of any day of marriage which the Church has appointed for mourning and fasting now that the Bridegroom is taken away. Especially will he utterly abhor so grievous a contempt of the day on which we weekly keep in remembrance the Death and Passion of our Saviour, or the forty days of His sacred fast and solitude in the howling wilderness 5.

It would be well if people would cease to encourage the abuse of marriage by licence. Why should they be ashamed of Christian matrimony? Why should they help to make the Church less catholic, by having one usage for the rich, another for the poor? Why should they condemn dispensations and yet use them? Also, "Experience shows that

5 "Marriage in Lent is directly against the very Council of Laodicea, to which we are indebted for the Canon of the Scriptures. Can. lii. a.d. 365.”—Comber on the Office of Matrimony.

way doth not so effectually prevent undue marriages as banns would do "."

(For penitential and preparatory devotions, see Appendix.)

6 Comber.

CHAPTER III.

SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY.

WELL were it if the watchful eyes and anxious thoughts of the time immediately preceding marriage were alert, not with mere eagerness to fulfil a long hope, or with plans and preparations; nor even with the regrets and bitter human feelings concerning the past and the future, the old home and the new, the old friends, the old life, and the change which is approaching.

A deeper care, a higher vigilance should displace these, or, at least, throw them into the shade, should still them, put them calmly by. The eyes should watch unto prayer; the thoughts should be secured with holy resolutions; all avenues of temptation foreclosed, of temptations to vanity, worldly-mindedness, impurity, forgetfulness of God, and of the great end of life. The whole vigilance of the soul is needed, that it be not unhinged, that it cease not to be itself, and fall into folly.

SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY.

31

Let there, then, be a service in the closet first, and then that of the Church will bring manifold more comfort and counsel.

And now let it be supposed that the time is arrived. The Church permits marriages to be celebrated only before noon not merely to prevent excess, but in sign of joy, in sign of light and happiness to come. The sunbeams do not slant at that hour; for no sign of decay shall accompany an act, the holy effects of which are to live and last, the joy and happiness of which are in their youth.

The persons to be married come into the body of the church because their marriage is a public act, the concern of the congregation. The bride is placed on the right hand suitably to the psalm', and, because she is a type of the Church, presented pure and spotless, and placed at God's right hand. At once the persons to be married are reminded that they are met together "in the sight of God," words which deliver from evil thoughts, like those of the Saviour, "Be silent, and come out of him;" and from troubled thoughts and fears, like that saying, "Be not afraid, it is I." They

1 Comber, Ps. xlv. 10.

2 See Comber.

are both in a "dreadful place" and at the gate of heaven"." They are told that matrimony was instituted in the time of man's innocency, so that it both may be pure and must, both may agree with perfection to the Lord and should.

Next: "Marriage is declared to be an honourable estate from the practice of our Saviour, Who, designing to do honour to this holy Rite, was present at a marriage, and wrought His first miracle there, and, doubtless, His presence at it testified His approbation of it; and it also gives us hope, that if we call and invite Him to this marriage by fervent prayers, He will be spiritually present with us now, and, by His power and mercy, He will turn those waters of affliction to which this (as well as other estates in this world) is liable, into the wine of joy "."

:

Then the Church declares the use of marriage that it is not to gratify a fancy, to increase a fortune, to gain respectability, to please the flesh, but

1. To perpetuate the Church on earth, and to fill the courts of heaven.

3 Gen. xxviii. 17.

4 John ii.

5 Comber.