Page:Marriage Its Origin, Uses, and Duties.pdf/27

 union—that it exists in heaven as well as upon earth. This I consider necessary to be clearly seen, believing that there can be no real acknowledgment of the spirituality of marriage so long as its fitness for heaven is doubted, much less when it is denied. That marriage exists in heaven follows as a conclusion from what has already been advanced on the subject. If, as we have seen, sex is grounded in the very constitution of the human soul, and is thus essentially spiritual, it cannot but exist in the spiritual world. If marriage is essentially a union of souls, death cannot dissolve it: if it is chaste, pure, and holy, it cannot be unworthy of a place in that kingdom inhabited by the pure in heart. Indeed, if marriage exists in its purity only with the heavenly-minded, where can it exist in its perfection but in heaven itself? Is it reasonable to suppose that a union which becomes more interior and happy as the parties become more matured in the life of heaven, shall be broken off at the very threshold of eternity? How unlike, then, must be the state of preparation to the state of enjoyment! Nor would those states be unlike in one particular, but in all particulars. If sex could be abolished, and the conjugial principle rooted out from the soul, the state of the human being would undergo a change so great as to leave hardly any trace of his own identity; and he would have to begin to live from some new principle of thought and affection, if a neuter soul could be supposed to live from any principle of thought and affection