And does not, therefore, a terrible judgment accompany that indiscriminate matrimonial union with the unbelieving world, of which so many Christians, in the present day, are guilty?  Parents encourage their pious children to marry unbelievers, though they are well aware that such unholy mixtures are expressly forbidden, and that spiritual harmony is essential to their happiness.  “She is at liberty to be married to whom she will, only in the Lord!” Those who violate this cardinal law of marriage, must expect to suffer the penalties attached to it.  History is the record of these.  The disappointed hopes, and the miseries of unnumbered homes speak forth their execution.  This great scripture law has its foundation in the very nature of marriage itself.  If marriage involves the law of spiritual harmony; if, in the language of the Roman law, it is “the union of a man and woman, constituting an united habitual course of life, never to be separated;” if it is a partnership of the whole life,—­a mutual sharing in all rights, human and divine; if they are one flesh,—­one in all the elements of their moral being, as Christ and His church are one; if it is a mystery of man’s being, antecedent to all human law; if, in a word, man and woman in marriage, are no more twain, but one flesh; and if the oneness of our nature is framed of the body, the soul, and the spirit, then is it not plain that when two persons marry, who possess no spiritual fitness for, or harmony with, each other, they violate the fundamental law of wedlock; and their marriage cannot meet the scripture conception of matrimonial union or oneness.  There will be no adaptation of the whole nature for each other; they will not appreciate the sacred mysteriousness of marriage; instead of the moral and religious development of the spiritual nature, there will be the evolution of selfishness and sensuality as the leading motives of domestic life.  We see, then, that the Christian cannot with impunity, violate the scripture law, “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.”

Shall the Christian parent and child disregard this prohibition of God?  Will you ridicule this fundamental principle of Christian marriage?  Will the children of God not hesitate to marry the children of the devil?  Can these walk together, in domestic union and harmony?  Can saint and sinner be of one mind, one spirit, one life, one hope, one interest?  Can the children of the light and the children of darkness, opposite in character and in their apprehension of things, become flesh of each other’s flesh, and by the force of their blended light and darkness shed, around their home-fireside the cheerfulness of a mutual love, of a common life and hope, and of a progressive spiritual work?

Parents! it is your right and duty to interfere when your children violate this law.  Bring them up from infancy to respect it.  In the parlor, train them to appreciate its religious importance.  Show them that God will visit the iniquity of their departure from it, unto the third and fourth generation.  You are stimulated to do so by the divine promise that when they grow old, they will not depart from it.