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 for the sake of our own. This voluntary and habitual work of self-denial, while it is one of the truest signs of genuine love, is one of the highest uses of real marriage. Wherever there is love, there is fear, fear to injure, and thus to alienate, the object loved. This use of marriage is strikingly pointed out in the words of our text: "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." This does not merely refer to a man's leaving the paternal roof to become the head of a new household. The father and mother, spiritually understood, are the hereditary principles which he inherits from his parents.

IV. We now come, fourthly, to point out some of the duties of marriage.

There is no greater error, yet none more common, than to expect results without performing the duties, or complying with the conditions, which are necessary to secure them; and in no case, perhaps, does this prevail to a greater extent than in that of marriage. The lover luxuriates in the idea of exalted felicity in possessing the object of his affections; but so frequently does possession end in disappointment, that those early anticipations have come to be very generally regarded as the creations of a romantic feeling. There is not, however, any real incompatibility between the ideal and the actual in marriage. If married partners would continue to love each other as exclusively and tenderly and deferentially as in the days