look upon all obedience as a slavish thing—­that obedience which “doth preserve the stars from wrong,” and through which “the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong”; that obedience which when absolute and implicit to the Divine will is “a service of perfect freedom”?  It is the profession which exacts unquestionable obedience that forms the finest school for character, as I have already pointed out.  We do not hear of a Wellington or a Roberts refusing to enter the service because they could not give up their independence.  Our military heroes at least know that it is through discipline and obedience that they gain their real independence—­the independence of a strong character.

Again, our girls need to be taught not only that there is nothing derogatory in the married relation to the freest and fullest independence of character, but surely in these days of open advocacy by some popular writers of “les unions libres” and a freedom of divorce that comes to much the same thing, they need to be taught the sanctity of marriage—­those first principles which hitherto we have taken for granted, but which now, like everything else, is thrown into the crucible and brought into question.  They need definite teaching as to the true nature of marriage; that it is no mere contract to be broken or kept according to the individual contractor’s convenience—­I never yet heard of a contract for bringing into existence, not a successful machine, but a moral and spiritual being with infinite possibilities of weal or woe, of heaven or hell—­but a sacramental union of love and life, with sacramental grace given to those who will seek it to live happily and endure nobly within its sacred bounds—­a union so deep and mystical that even on its physical side our great physiologists are wholly at a loss to account for some of its effects;[34] a union of which permanence is the very essence, as on its permanence rests the permanence and stability of the whole fabric of our life.  It can never be treated on an individualistic basis, though that is always the tendency with every man and woman who has ever loved.  In Mrs. Humphry Ward’s words: 

“That is always the way; each man imagines the matter is still for his deciding, and he can no more decide it than he can tamper with the fact that fire burns or water drowns.  All these centuries the human animal has fought with the human soul.  And step by step the soul has registered her victories.  She has won them only by feeling for the law and finding it—­uncovering, bringing into light the firm rocks beneath her feet.  And on these rocks she rears her landmarks—­marriage, the family, the State, the Church.  Neglect them and you sink into the quagmire from which the soul of the race has been for generations struggling to save you."[35]

Fall on this rock, stumble into unhappiness and discontent, as so many do in marriage, and you will be broken.  But be faithful to it and to the high traditions which