e existence is but the
vestibule of real life, where anticipation weaves a golden web, bearing
but a faint resemblance to the web of actual life. The youthful
imagination is apt to dress the institution of Marriage in too many
garlands, and to consider it full of ethereal joys and paradisaical
blessedness such as can exist only in the chambers of an untaught fancy.
That the natural fruitage of true Marriage is peace and blessedness is a
pleasing fact which we can not contemplate but with delight, and for
which we can not be too grateful. But it must always be understood that
the joys of marriage are natural, and such as grow out of the
performance of duty and a life of truthfulness. They are conditioned
upon obedience to the matrimonial laws. It is not all the married that
are happy. If you would find misery double-distilled, you may find it in
awful and ruinous abundance among the married who entered their real
life in the whirl of enthusiastic delight. There is every possible
degree of anguish in the married life, from the unbreathed unrest of the
thinly clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in loud
denunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw back
the vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black waves
of distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire and
dirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of the
world's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubt
that the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility.
Like every other good, it must be rightly used or it turns to evil. The
good of good things is mostly in their use. Life is good if rightly
used, but oh, how bad when wholly abused! So with Marriage. The best
things become instruments of the direst evil when wrested from their
true use.

The first lesson to learn in relation to Marriage is, that its fruits of
peace and joy hang on the boughs of obedience to its regulations,
conformity to its laws. Who would be happy in the married life must
enter into it well and live it righteously. It has laws to be obeyed,
regulations to be observed, principles to be submitted to, without
which it has no joys, no elysian fields of bliss and blessedness, no
buds and flowers of virtue and happiness.

It will never do to go blindly into a state of such intimate relations.
Here soul meets with soul face to face. Propensities, passions, desires,
inclination