Christian Marriage (Henson)/Preface
PREFACE
No questions are in themselves of greater importance, and none more difficult to answer wisely, than those which are connected with the institution of marriage. On the one hand, they affect the large, complicated and ramifying interests of property, for all rules of succession must be based on the principles which determine legitimacy. On the other hand they affect, and that in the most manifest and vital degree, the morals of the community, for the sexual relationship itself is regulated either for good or for evil by the Marriage Law.
Morality stands in the closest connection with religion, and the Church hardly less than the State is interested in the rules which determine the conditions under which the marriage union is created and cancelled. Social stability is not to be severed from domestic purity, and this depends on the standard of marital fidelity which is maintained among the citizens. Family discipline determines, more largely than any other factor, public morality; nothing can take the place of home influence in the shaping of character, and this influence is plainly dependent on the view which husband and wife take of their union.
It will not be disputed that the importance of the questions raised by the statesman, the social student and the Christian moralist in connection with marriage is equalled by their difficulty. And this difficulty is gravely enhanced by the circumstance that too generally it is not sufficiently recognised. There are fanatics on both sides of the standing conflict between Church and State who apply the simple logic of fanaticism to the problem of marriage, and avoid by ignoring the questions which none the less must ultimately be answered. That marriage is a contract, and therefore from first to last the creature of the law, is the assumption on the one side; that marriage is a sacrament, and therefore determined by a higher authority than that of the State, is the assumption of the other.
Divorce is mere matter of expediency, regulated by statute, to the first. Divorce is divinely prohibited and therefore outside the range of any human authorisation to the last. It is sufficiently obvious that between these positions there can be no harmony. One must prevail over the other.
In this little book an attempt is made to indicate the elements which must combine in a doctrine of Christian marriage, and therefore must direct the course of a Christian citizen through the difficult discussions of the practical issues concerned. I have not thought it well to embark on such questions of immediate concern as the revision of the Tables of Kindred and Affinity now apparently contemplated by Parliament, nor have I entered on the exasperating subject of clerical duty in the matter of remarrying divorced persons. These subjects seemed to be unsuitable for so brief a treatment as alone would be possible in a small book. But I have indicated, not obscurely, that I do not think these practical questions can rightly or reasonably be answered by direct appeals to the Bible or the Church. The Christian law of marriage must beyond all question find its principles in the teaching of Jesus Christ, and its exposition within the Christian society, but the application of evangelical principles will not be learned from the pages of the New Testament, nor may the witness of the Church be safely identified with ecclesiastical precedents and decisions in former times.
The relations of Church and State, not merely in that comparatively trivial version of them which is known as "Establishment," but in that larger and more complicated view which includes the whole contact of religion and society, require imperatively at the present time a thorough examination. No thoughtful citizen will contemplate without deep misgivings the alienation from the State of the moral force embodied in the Church, and no reflective Christian will lightly esteem the misfortunes inherent in a deliberate and sustained divergence of principle between the New Testament and the Statute Book. All must see how gravely the course of social development is affecting public morals.
Good citizens, as such, can combine in the effort to preserve the moral heritage of the State, and to bring to the solemn and difficult work of government all the moral forces of the nation. As a first step in such combination there is need that some agreement should be reached as to the principles at stake, the claims on either side which are irreducible, the necessary conditions of co-operation. If I have succeeded in stating the problem form the Christian point of view my purpose has been secured.
H. HENSLEY HENSON.