Gold Nugget 345 - True Marriage

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      In a true marriage a man’s wife is his best friend.  Fellowship of soul makes the union more than a mere contract of external relationship.  Now, this fellowship is greatly needed for solace amid the cares of life, and strength to face its difficulties.  The wife is able to give it to her husband, and the husband to the wife, as no persons in the outer circle of social relationship can hope to offer it. …

      Woman is degraded when she is treated as a toy of idle hours, to amuse in the drawing-room, but not to take her share in the serious concerns of life.  No true woman would desire so idle a position. …

      The wife is not the counterpart of the husband, but the complement.  Human nature is completed in the union of the two.  Therefore it is not the part of women to imitate men, nor is inferiority to be assigned to women because they differ from men.  The rich, full, perfect human life is attained by the blending of differences. …

      There must be mutual confidence between husband and wife if the marriage is to be one of true and lasting blessedness.  The Oriental cruelty of imprisonment in the harem, and the Western cruelty of degradation in domestic drudgery, are both fatal to the idea of marriage.  Whatever be their position in the social scale, it is possible for husbands and wives to share one another’s interest and enlarge one another’s lives by conceding the fullest mutual confidence. …             Selfishness is fatal to marriage.  Love must learn to give, to suffer, to endure.  The happiness is most complete when each seeks it chiefly for the other. …

      The true marriage must be ratified in heaven.  Its happiness may be wrecked on so many hidden rocks that it is not safe to venture on to the unknown sea without the assurance that God is guiding the voyage. 

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Proverbs 356, Proverbs 18:22, (W. F. Adeney)

 

Gold Nugget 345

True Marriage

 

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