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The Ministers' Directory Or, Forms for the Various Duties of the Holy Ministry, According to the Practice Fo the Church of Scotland, 2nd Ed.,
The Ministers' Directory Or Forms for the Various Duties of the Holy Ministry According to the Practice Fo the Church of Scotland 2nd Ed Author:James Anderson Title: The Ministers' Directory Or, Forms for the Various Duties of the Holy Ministry, According to the Practice Fo the Church of Scotland, 2nd Ed., Corrected General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1862 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or miss... more »ing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: MARRIAGE SERVICE. Mabriage, as the most important of all connexions, was divinely intended to be also the most permanent. If our first parents had not sinned, it would have even been as imperishable as themselves. If marriage be a religious bond, why should it not be made the subject of a religious form ? Why should not a sacred connexion, which probably shapes the whole future course of life, which creates new duties, and which imposes new responsibilities to God and man, be marked by the solemnities of that religion through which alone the virtues of our mortal state can be sustained ? There can be but two kinds of obligation in marriage -- the civil contract, and the religious contract. The former binding so long as the law can bind, but necessarily expiring with the law. The latter binding while life continues. To which of those contracts marriage actually belongs the Christian can have no rational doubt whatever. Its divine obligation might be proved even from the nature of its objects ; for, unless it were indissoluble, it would be wholly inadequate to the preservation of mental purity and domestic peace, to the protection of woman, and to the education of children; and to be indissoluble, it must be divine. But we havethe most authoritative of all evidence in the testimony of our Lord -- " Whom God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." " In all cases of regular marriages, when the certificates of the proclamation of the banns a...« less