Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/427

 of Nature, or as a divine institution, and as a sacrament of the New Testament church, which now, after the fall of man, sanctifies this law.” (p. 476.)

The sanctifying sacrament consists in this: “In order to sanctify, uplift, and strengthen the law of matrimony, which is holy and pure in itself as to its origin from God and as to its purposes, but which because of the disturbance of human nature has fallen under the harmful influence of sin and has in many ways been distorted by men who have abandoned themselves to sensuality, our Lord Jesus has been pleased to establish in his church a special sacrament, that of marriage. Under the name of this sacrament is understood a sacred action in which to the contracting parties, who before the church make a promise of mutual conjugal fidelity, there is communicated from above, through the blessing of the servant of the church, divine grace, which sanctifies their conjugal union, elevates it to an image of Christ’s spiritual union with the church, and then cooperates with them in the blessed acquisition of all the purposes of marriage.” (pp. 478 and 479.)

That is, in connection with the law of marriage, which in itself is holy, the hierarchy finds it necessary to sanctify again.

234. A divine origin of the sacrament of marriage, as a sacrament, apparently does not, and cannot, exist in the Gospels, nor is there anything in them to hitch on to, and so the place is chosen in the Gospel where the word “marriage” is used. That place about the marriage in Cana of Galilee, which has nothing in common with the establishment of marriage, not even with its blessing and approval, is, taken as a basis. The Theology itself feels, as in the case of the unction with oil, that there is nothing to hitch on to, and so it says:

“Of when and how the Lord established the sacrament of marriage, whether when he was present at the marriage