There is much talk about marriage nowadays which would incline one to imagine, did one judge only by the outward appearance of it, that the old idea of marriage as a Sacrament has disappeared from the modern world. We say no. We say a thousand times no. We say marriage has, if anything, become for our generation more of a Sacrament, a Sacrament in a deeper and fuller sense of the word, than it was for our fathers before us. We hear a great deal nowadays of relativity. Truth, we are told, is relative to the mind of the truth-perceiver. How fortifying, if rightly viewed, is this doctrine! It applies, does it not, to the case of husband and wife as much as elsewhere. To the husband, the wife, to the wife, the husband, seems a paragon of beauty, a treasure-house of wit, energy, and charm: old age comes, perhaps, and the bright eyes are dimmed and the raven hair silvers, and yet, between this loving pair, the ravages wrought by time are unmarked: he is still beautiful and charming to her, she to him. “For old sake’s sake she is still, dears, the prettiest doll in the world.” What, then, is the truth of the matter? May we not boldly say that the truth relative to their two minds—and all truth, remember, is relative to a mind—is that the man and the woman ARE REALLY the most beautiful pair of creatures in the world? That the honeyed whispers of love, which to the profane ear would seem to contain baseless flatteries, are nevertheless in a very real sense the Truth? Dear Miss Winterhead, if you brought home to us from America, _per impossible_, the most ungainly of hunchbacks, I for one would still hold it Truth that he was the handsomest of men, because to your Truth-perceiving mind he is so.
When we have gone so far, we may surely go further. Marriage, besides being a Sacrament, is a contract. A contract holds good so long, and only so long, as the essential facts of the situation, in consideration of which the contracting parties bound themselves, remain unaltered. Thus, if I am under contract to water a particular plant, my obligation ceases if the plant dies; or (to put the case more strongly) if a friend of mine hands me an egg, and I promise to put it under a hen and give it, when hatched, the freedom of my fowl-run, my contract automatically ceases if the egg proves to be that of a crocodile. Now, the marriage contract is made between two persons each of whom is to the other, and therefore philosophically speaking _is_, the most beautiful creature in the world. They are married, a shadow grows up between them, there are scenes, difficulties—suddenly they wake up to find that they are no longer in love with one another. He sees her as a vulgar harridan; she sees him as a churlish egotist. What has happened? Why, _the facts have changed_, the essential facts which formed the basis of the contract. He is no longer the same man, she is no longer the same woman. By all means, for practical purposes, keep up the formality of divorce. But a divorce is only a recognition of something that has already taken place. The contract has automatically expired. Therefore, dear Miss Winterhead, if it should happen (as I hope it will not happen for many, many years to come) that you should find yourself looking at Lord Porstock with other eyes than those you have for him at present, no one will be more ready than myself to admit that you are no longer married to him. I hope that my meaning is clear.