over such immoral wedlock, is guilty of a worse sacrilege than if he trampled on the bread and wine of Christ’s Communion!  For marriage was not intended to be a mere union of bodies,—­but a union of souls.  It is the most sacred bond of humanity.  From the love which has created that bond, is born new life,—­life which shall be good or evil according to the spirit in which husband and wife are wedded.  ’The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children,’—­and the first and greatest sin is bodily union without soul-love.  It is merely a form of animal desire,—­and from desire alone no good or lofty thing can spring.  We are not made to be ’as the beasts that perish’—­though materialists and sensualists delight in asserting such to be our destiny, in order to have ground whereon to practise their own vices.  This planet, the earth, is set under our dominion; the beasts are ours to control,—­ they do not control us.  Our position therefore is one of supremacy.  Let us not voluntarily fall from that position to one even lower than the level of beasts!  The bull, the goat, the pig, are moved by animal desire alone to perpetuate their kind—­but we,—­we have a grander mission to accomplish than theirs—­we in our union are not only responsible for the Body of the next generation to come, but for the brain, the heart, the mind, and above all the Soul!  If we wed in sin, our children must be born in sin.  If we make our marriages for worldly advantage, vanity, blind desire, or personal convenience, our children will be moulded on those passions, and grow up to be curses to the world they live in.  Love, and love only of the purest, truest, and highest kind, must be the foundation of the marriage Sacrament,—­love that is prepared to endure all the changes of fate and fortune—­love that is happy in working and suffering for the thing beloved—­love that counts nothing a hardship,—­neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor poverty, provided it can keep its faith unbroken!”

He paused—­there was a slight stir among the audience, but otherwise not a sound.  Sylvie sat quiet, a graceful, nymph-like figure, veiled in her cloudy white—­Cardinal Bonpre’s mild blue eyes raised to the speaker’s face, were full of rapt attention—­and Manuel still leaning against the great Cross seemed absorbed in dreamy and beautiful thoughts of his own.

“I should like,” went on Aubrey with increasing warmth and passion, “to tell you what I mean by ‘faith unbroken.’  It is the highest form of love,—­the only firm rock of friendship.  It leaves no room for suspicion,—­no place for argument—­no cause for contradiction.  It is the true meaning of the wedding-ring.  Apart from marriage altogether, it is the only principle that can finally civilize and elevate man.  So long as we doubt God and mistrust our fellows, so long must corruption sway business, and wars move nations.  The man who gives us cause to suspect his honesty,—­the man who forces us to realize the existence of treachery,