SECTION II.

FALSE TESTS IN THE SELECTION OF A COMPANION FOR LIFE.

Before we advert to some of those biblical principles upon which parents and children should proceed in the marriage choice, we shall take a negative view of the subject, and mention some of those false principles and considerations which have in the present day gained a fearful ascendancy over the better judgment of many professed Christians.

In the matter of marriage, too many are influenced by the pomp and parade of the mere outward.  The glitter of gold, the smile of beauty, and the array of titled distinction and circumstance, act like a charm upon the feelings and sentiments of many well-meaning parents and children.  But it is not all gold that glitters.  We must not think that those are happy in their marriage union, because they are obsequious in their attentions to each other, and live together in splendor, overloaded with fashionable congratulations.  We cannot determine the character of a marriage from its pomp and pageantry.  We rather determine the many unhappy matches from the false principles upon which the parties acted in making choice of each other.  What are some of these?  We answer—­

1.  The manner of paying addresses involves a false principle of procedure.  These are either too long or too short, and paid in an improper spirit and manner.  There are too much flirtation and romance connected with them.  The religious element is not taken up and considered.  They do not involve the true idea of preparation, but have an air of mere sentimentalism about them.  The object in view is not fully seen.  The most reprehensible motives and the most shocking thoughtlessness pervade them throughout.  These addresses carry with them an air of trifling, a want of seriousness and frankness, which betrays the absence of all sense of responsibility, and of all proper views of the sacredness of marriage and of its momentous consequences both for time and for eternity.

2.  The habit of match-making involves a false principle.  This we see more fully among the higher classes of society.  It is the work of designing and interested persons, who, for self-interest, intrude their unwelcome interposition.  Its whole procedure implies that marriage is simply a legal matter, a piece of business policy, a domestic speculation.  It strikes out the great law of mutual, moral love, and personal adaptation.  It makes marriage artificial, and apprehends it as only a mechanical copartnership of interest and life.  It is sinister in spirit, and selfish in the end.  Many are prompted from motives of novelty to make matches among their friends.  All their schemes tend to wrest from the parties interested all true judgment and dispassionate consideration.  They are deceived by base misrepresentation, allured by over-wrought pictures of conjugal felicity, so that when the marriage is consummated, they soon find their golden dreams vanish away, and with them, their hopes and their happiness forever.