consent, on which finally everything depends. Indirectly the Gospel disallows those melancholy unions which are planned by covetous or ambitious parents for their children, into which their children are hurried, often at a scandalously early age, always under conditions which render the notion of free, voluntary, intelligent, deliberate consent absolutely grotesque. These marriages, which profane the sanctuary in the making, pollute society in the unmaking. They are invalid from the first.
Let it be observed that it has only been by slow degrees that Christians have realised the requirements of the Gospel in the matter of personal independence. That the indispensable element in marriage should be, not the consent of parents and guardians, though that is rightly held to be important, but the affectionate choice of the individuals themselves, is a very modern, and by no means even yet an universal, opinion. Assuredly, however, it is the direct consequence of the
