at we have a subject before us of solemn and weighty
importance. It relates to some of the dearest interests of our
earth-life, gathers within itself some of the holiest affections of our
hearts, and places before the bars of our consciences some of the most
serious questions of practical morality and religion. Man and woman are
a related pair. God has made them so. The relation they bear to each
other is a divine one. It takes hold of the heart of life. It spans our
whole manhood. It enters into our hopes, aims, and prospects. It holds
its scepter over our business, our amusements, our philosophy, and
religion. Its sphere is larger than we at first imagine. The relation is
deeper and broader than we have yet comprehended. It lies in the very
being of every man and every woman. There is in humanity two grand
primary and universal principles of being--the masculine and feminine.
They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to the
action of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. It
is in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springs
of animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than any
other, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. We
ought to approach it wrapt in reverential awe and wonder. We look out on
the earth in its brilliant beauty and teeming activity, and up to the
heavens in their gorgeous glory and magnificent movements, and are
oppressed with profound astonishment at what we behold. Yet all this we
can in a measure comprehend. At least the secondary causes of the
physical universe are clear to our minds. We can measure them with the
line of mathematics; we can weigh them in the balance of reason. But
when we turn in upon ourselves we meet a universe ten thousand times
more wonderful and glorious, yet wrapt in the deep mystery of spiritual
being. It is practical irreverence not to look upon our relations with
religious respect. Of all these relations, the one between man and woman
takes the most direct held of our practical life and enters most largely
into the details of our purposes and thoughts. Men and women live in and
for each other more than for any thing else. The fact stands out on the
face of human society. We must take the fact as we find it. We did not
make human nature; hence we have no right to complain of it. Our
business is to comprehend it so far as possible and seek to keep it in
the path of it