Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall join to his wife: and they shall be one flesh. I. THE NATURE AND END OF MARRIAGE. It is a vow of perpetual and indissoluble friendship. 1. It has long been observed that friendship is to be confined to one: or that, to use the words of the axiom, "He that hath friends, has no friend." That ardour of kindness, that unbounded confidence, that unsuspecting security which friendship requires, cannot be extended beyond a single object. 2. It is remarked, that friendship amongst equals is the most lasting, and perhaps there are few causes to which more unhappy marriages are to be ascribed than a disproportion between the original condition of the two persons. 3. Strict friendship is to have the same desires and the same aversions. Whoever is to choose a friend is to consider first the resemblance or the dissimilitude of tempers. How necessary this caution is to be urged as preparatory to marriage, the misery of those who neglect it sufficiently evinces. 4. Friends, says the proverbial observation, "have everything in common." This is likewise implied in the marriage covenant. Matrimony admits of no separate possessions, no incommunicable interests. 5. There is yet another precept equally relating to friendship and to marriage, a precept which, in either case, can never be too strongly inculcated, or too scrupulously observed; "Contract friendship only with the good." Virtue is the first quality to be considered in the choice of a friend, and yet more in a fixed and irrevocable choice. II. BY WHAT MEANS THE END OF MARRIAGE IS TO BE ATTAINED. The duties, by the practice of which a married life is to be made happy, are the same with those of friendship, but exalted to higher perfection. Love must be more ardent, and confidence without limits. It is therefore necessary on each part to deserve that confidence by the most unshaken fidelity, and to preserve their love unextinguished by continual acts of tenderness: not only to detest all real, but seeming offences: and to avoid suspicion and guilt, with almost equal solicitude. (John Taylor, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. |
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