As the Creator and Preserver of mankind, as the Lord of Nature and the Father of Spirits, God has made us social beings, and decreed that the most important association should be a lasting one. The natural law, which in lower creatures establishes a transient union, enacts the permanence of the higher relation, and when profoundly studied agrees with the precepts of Revelation and the results of the best experience.
God's will is clearly shown in the effect of marriage upon the moral condition of the parties themselves. It is generally essential to their true life--to the proper development of their affections and faculties. Under good Providence, it is the school of the heart, the motive to the most laudable exertion and sacrifice. There are persons indeed whose peculiar duties may exempt them from its cares,--scholars, devotees, philanthropists, who may give their whole heart to their chosen speciality, and make of science, religion or humanity their family and home. Yet these are not the general rule, and even these generally prove that the peculiar power acquired by concentrating their whole mind upon a single pursuit gives them force at the expense of breadth of culture, and may be morbid because preternatural. The monk and nun, in the convent or out of it, have done noble things, and every faithful memory must bless them for it--but not the noblest things. They have shown much mercy, yet quite as much spiritual pride. If they have fed the poor, they have framed the Mass Book and the Confessional. If they have cared for the orphan, they have also invented infant damnation and the Inquisition, insisting on hell hereafter for all not baptized by their priesthood, and devising a hell here below for all heretics against their creed. Unmarried people ruled Christendom for a thousand years, and that they did not rule in wisdom, the Bible, history, and our best modern culture all declare. Nay, the very sage of modern celibacy, Swedenborg, gave years of his life and the chief labors of his pen to prove, that the best wisdom comes from minds united conjugially, imbuing thought with affection, and informing affection with thought, and so best interpreting the God in Christ. They who may be puzzled by his mystical lore will have no difficulty with the more practical argument, or refuse to allow that the most healthy thought and feeling, the most comprehensive culture, frequents the home which a true marriage makes.