od's laws must be heeded and
obeyed. "Marriage," said Gail Hamilton, "is a friendship of the sexes
so profound, so comprehensive, that it includes the whole being. The
inflow of the divine life,

"'Bright effluence of bright essence increate,'

"blends the man nature and the woman nature into an absolute oneness,
which shapes itself ever thereafter into the only perfect symmetry.
Thus alone comes humanity in the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ. Thus marriage forever tends to
its own annihilation,--not the annihilation of a stream swallowed up
in desert sands, but of a river broadening to the boundless sea. The
more perfect its substance, the more yielding its form. As it gathers
power it diminishes pomp, till, by a pathway which the vulture's eye
hath not seen and never can see, marriage itself leads to the land
where they neither marry nor are given in marriage.

"Wherever man pays reverence to woman,--wherever any man feels the
influence of any woman, purifying, chastening, abashing, strengthening
him against temptation, shielding him from evil, ministering to his
self-respect, medicining his weariness, peopling his solitude, winning
him from sordid prizes, enlivening his monotonous days with mirth, or
fancy, or wit, flashing heaven upon his earth, and mellowing it for
all spiritual fertility,--there is the element of marriage. Wherever
woman pays reverence to man,--wherever any woman rejoices in the
strength of any man, feels it to be God's agent, upholding her
weakness, confirming her purpose, and crowning her power,--wherever
he reveals himself to her, just, upright, inflexible, yet tolerant,
merciful, benignant, not unruffled, perhaps, but not overcome by the
world's turbulence, and responding to all her gentleness, his feet
on the earth, his head among the stars, helping her to hold her
soul steadfast in right, to stand firm against the encroachments of
frivolity, vanity, impatience, fatigue, and discouragement, helping to
preserve her good nature, to develop her energy, to consolidate
her thought, to utilize her benevolence, to exalt and illumine her
life,--there is the essence of marriage. Its love is founded on
respect, and increases self-respect at the very moment of merging
itself in another. Its love is mutual, equally giving and receiving
at every instant of its action. There is neither dependence