"Marriage-making for the earth, With gold so much, - birth, power, repute so much, Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these! Be as the angels rather, who, apart, Know themselves into one, are found at length Married, but marry never, no, nor give In marriage; they are man and wife at once When the true time is: here we have to wait Not so long neither! Could we by a wish Have what we will and get the future now, Would we wish aught done undone in the past? So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."

- Browning.

"Just as true marriage is the highest blessedness that can come to man or woman, so a false marriage, a marriage conceived in vanity or avarice or sensuality, is the most fearful calamity. The binding of two loveless, selfish hearts together can only result in mutual misery. The resulting state is not simply hell, as it is frequently called. It is that more painful, out at the same time more hopeful condition, which in figurative language we may describe as the compelling of persons who are fit only for hell to dwell perpetually in heaven. It is a condition which calls for the expression of the most tender and unselfish love at every point of constant contact, imposed upon persons who have no love to give. The supreme blessedness of the ideal marriage measures by contrast the superlative wretchedness of a loveless union. . . . The modern man brings to his wife a wide range of business sagacity, po-

2l8 litical influence, scientific and speculative interests. The modern woman brings to her husband rich acquisitions in literary and esthetic taste, social life and philanthropic and religious fervor. Each life is reenforced and multiplied by all that is in the other; and thus both enter through the portals of the family into the life of the Universal Spirit, of which at best only vague and shadowy glimpses come to them in the blindness of their individualistic isolation."

- Wm. De Witt Hyde.

"But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.

"For this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife,

"And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh." - Mark 10: 6, 7, 8.

"For this reason will a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife."

The mystery of marriage is in the twain becoming one. If we go back to the allegorical story of creation, we find there this statement:

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."

The remarkable part of this statement is the introduction of unity and duality both in reference to God and man. The Hebrews believed in God as being one. The world has never had a purer monotheism than that held to by this people; and yet in this first chapter of their sacred books is found a declaration of unity, duality, and trinity.

To satisfy the mind of the Biblical student, let us make a careful examination and see whether the foregoing statement is borne out by the actual facts in the case, taking the thought of unity, first: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him." The thought of duality is as directly brought out in, "Let us make man in our own image." Those who declare for the Fatherhood of God should not fail to perceive that the Motherhood is just as clearly set forth. The trinity is affirmed in the statement of the Father-Mother God creating man in His own image and likeness; the Father-Mother begetting the child which is the third principle of the Godhead. That which is true of God is also true of man, and must of necessity be so in order that man should show forth the perfect image and likeness of God. Careful reading will make it plain that God is a unit as regards animating life and controlling intelligence.

But the full image and likeness of God is in father, mother, child; it is one life in all and through all and above all. And one intelligence controlling and directing all. Oneness in spirit and diversity in form.

We must always remember when we think of man, that image and likeness of God is spirit, not body. That the body at best can only be an outer symbol of the inner man.

Again, I wish to impress you with the fact that in this spiritual creation of man, which is really the foreshadowing of the physical creation, there is no separation between the male and the female. This is the spiritual creation, God's ideal of Himself, involved in the soul of man, the child of God. When we come to the allegorical second chapter of Genesis, we find another statement of man's creation. Here we have the physical creation, and at this point we have the differentiation of the male and the female. It is as tho the soul had become divided, each part having a separate life or existence of its own.

In this division, the question naturally arises, did each retain the full image of God or did the physical condition point also to a division of soul or mind?

Emmanuel Swedenborg in many of his writings, tells of love as being the feminine principle and wisdom the masculine. Now, in all true marriages it is the love in the woman and the wisdom in the man that forms the magnet to attract and hold them together. Love and wisdom begets the at-one-ment between soul and mind.

When we see men and women drawn toget her in this way it seems to be the divine plan, altho in times past it has been thought by some very wise men that each sex had the possibilities of both, potentially, and that in the process of development each soul would unfold to the fulness of the Godhead, or disclose the perfect image and likeness which was involved in the beginning; that men and women were not in reality complementary one to the other.