Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/138

 and over a large area of the national life of Protestant societies, earnestly followed. Now it is threatened, not with deliberate rejection, for never were the tributes to its excellence so many or so ardent, but threatened with the silent contempt of universal neglect, with a ceremonious exclusion from the public system of national education, with a practical rejection in the interest of a religious literature more favourable to reviving clericalist ambitions.

Yet the New Testament remains the best of all securities for the sanctity of marriage and the purity of social life. Of the influence of the modern State, which may be said in some sense to have emerged at the Reformation, we must speak in the next chapter, when it will be necessary to draw into some agreement the lines of thought which have been pursued, and to indicate the way of Christian duty with regard to the vital interest of marriage under the conditions of modern life.