Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/156

 riage all the happiness from highest to lowest which is attainable by rational and immortal creatures.

To have correct ideas of the true nature of marriage, we must reverently contemplate the character of in whose image the male and the female are created. This image can only be seen while it is remembered that. He made the man more the image and representative of, and the woman more the image and representative of. In other words, God's male image is His wisdom in its own proper human male form; and God's female is His love in its own proper human female form. And to represent the inseparableness of the marriage union existing in Himself, between His own love and His own wisdom, He provided that the human representative thereof should be capable of the most intimate union, as well of the soul as the body.

An apostle exhorts us not to "be unequally yoked:" that is, according to the spiritual application of the words, not to be conjoined with unholy affections and desires, or with unrighteous thoughts and persuasions. Unless we attend to this advice, the marriage cannot be considered truly conjugial. Before we can be interiorly united, the man must be regenerated, and made a form of heavenly love. To illustrate this, let us briefly recur to the marriage of the King's Son.

The King's Son is manifestly intended to represent the Lord Jesus Christ; And the marriage implies the union of Love and Wisdom, or the union of the Son with the Father, after the humanity had been "made perfect through suffering;" for the perfection thus