nature of things, prove unfortunate. But apart from thease unions it cannot be denied that in our age and country the ideal of the Christian marriage is very seldom realized. The vast majority of unions, if not positively unhappy, are at least only negatively fortunate. This cannot be other- wise if we reflect upon the nature, origin, and history of matrimony. Unless contracted in solemn view of its Divine end and object, with the sanction of the civil law, and the blessing of God's Church, it must depend upon purely natural considerations, and every one of the least experience in human disappointments knows how these must always result. The ante- Christian idea of ownership and mastery has clung with astonishing pertinacity to the marriage relation. To this reason, more than all others, must be attributed the universal want of sympathy accorded to the husband of an unfaithful wife. He is like the jailer whose prisoner's escape provokes only ridicule. It is, perhaps, the only grief at which every one laughs save the sufferer. The crime of the guilty becomes the shame of the innocent, and he is called "dishonored." Blood alone can wash away the stain ; the world absolutely prescribes for him to hill or he Icilled. Everywhere, in pro- portion to the weakening of Christian influence is the idea of ownership and mastery regaining the ascendency. An- other powerful cause of conjugal disappointment is the stupid notion that one can love but once. Love is charged with blindness, and not without reason.
"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind,"
says the great dissector of the human heart. Hence a "first passion" is often an injudicious one — its object being accredited with all that one wishes or can imagine of good-
