Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/55

 would he let himself again be ashamed of it nor would he fear natural desire because his father would call it sin.

What a dismal, solemn rite his father would have marriage be! First, of course, he—David—should become a minister of God; he should be fired with zeal for doing God's work. If then he found that he needed a wife and she could enter with all her soul into service of the Lord, he might marry. Paul, the great apostle, of course did not marry. "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," wrote Paul to the Corinthians. Nevertheless, if a man were not strong enough in the spirit to subdue the flesh, "let every man have his own wife . . . for it is better to marry than to burn."

Dave knew all that scripture by heart; he knew it so well, indeed, that it came to his mind, as it was written, entirely without bidding and when, in fact, he would not have it.

This said that to marry was to indulge a weakness of the flesh which—so Ephraim Herrick taught—might be redeemed if man and wife joined spiritually for God and if, as God blessed them, they bore children and brought them up to live righteously and in fear of the Lord. Thus Ephraim and Sarah Herrick had done. Thus they would have David do, at the right time. But now was not the right time for him to think of marriage and certainly not marriage with Alice Sothron, who was a worldly girl—oh, granted she was a generous, fond, unselfish girl—but she was a worldyworldly [sic] girl for she did not know how to be anything else. She would make him a worldly wife; she was