Entry 53
There are two principal and indeed essential relationships in every household and home of the human kind, in every house that is also a home. There is first the relationship of parent and child, and there is also the relationship of husband and wife. Other relationships may attach themselves to these, such as that of brother and sister, master and servant, magistrate and citizen, sovereign and subject. But the relationships that constitute and are essential to every complete human home are the parental and conjugal relationships. The fifth commandment protects the integrity and sanctity of the parental and filial relationships, and the seventh, in like manner, protects the yet more sacred relationship, the supreme and inviolable union between a man and a woman in marriage.
“The communion of the sexes is the complete giving up and appropriating of each party as the property of the other; hence where it is not the fruit of an already accomplished, morally-personal, spiritual unity, it is then an immoral throwing away of one’s moral personality, an irremediable ruining of the moral personality of the other. Lost innocence is irrecoverable, love that is not moral love is a defamation” (Wuttke).
“There is no ancient religion which is so sternly opposed to misconduct in these relations, and is yet so free from unnatural limitations of their due rights as Jahveism, the religion of Jehovah. What importance it attached to their purity, and how it sought to protect real marriage as the primary basis of all true life in common among human beings, is at once shown by its stringent laws on the subject. Chastity is an equal good with life itself. . . . The fair type of true matrimony in Isaac and his Rebecca does no more than represent with little alteration marriage as it really existed in the majority of families during the best days of the nation. Simple fidelity, pious love and attachment, and hence a certain amount of foresight in the choice of a wife from a worthy race, were not less in reality than they are in that type, the foundation on which a new family in Israel was created. All else that we know from history was in harmony with this; and here, too, we may clearly recognize the mighty working of an elevated religion” (Ewald).
Uses
“There is a perfect harmony between obligation to God and all the sources of pleasure and happiness God has provided, so that there is no real collision between the statutes over us and the conditions within us. It is only false pleasures that are denied us, those that would brutalize the mind, or mar the health of the body, or somehow violate the happiness of fellow-beings around us” (Bushnell).
“Amongst all sins, the sin of uncleanness lies heaviest upon the conscience; for no other sin is so directly contrary to holiness; no sin quenches the Holy Ghost like this” (Burkitt).
“How should our festered sores be cured, but that God hath delivered a law as sharp as the two-edged sword, piercing the very closest and most unsearchable corners of the heart, which the law of nature can hardly, human laws by no means possibly, reach unto? Hereby we know even secret concupiscence to be sin, and are made fearful to offend though it be but in a wandering cogitation” (Hooker).
In the Larger Catechism, intemperance in eating and drinking, immodest apparel, idleness, listening to filthy and corrupting conversation, lascivious songs, books, pictures, and all other provocations to sin are denounced. There is a great lesson to all men who would keep themselves pure in heart and life in the old classical story in which Cupid complains to Jupiter that he could never fasten upon the Muses, because he could never find them idle. And as regards our literature, pure as on the whole it is, still there is room for Cowley’s lament, that
“Still the old heathen gods in numbers dwell,
The heavenliest thing on earth still keeps up hell.”Concerning immoral thoughts Dr. Johnson said: “To attempt to think them down is madness.” And again: “Be not solitary when you are idle, be not idle when you are solitary.”
“True, all our lives long we shall be bound to refrain our soul, and keep it low: but what then? For the books we now forbear to read, we shall one day be endued with wisdom and knowledge. For the music we will not listen to, we shall join in the song of the redeemed. For the pictures from which we turn, we shall gaze unabashed on the Beatific Vision. For the companionship we shun, we shall be welcomed into angelic society, and the communion of triumphant saints. For the amusements we avoid, we shall keep the supreme jubilee. For all the pleasure we miss, we shall abide, and for evermore abide, in the rapture of heaven” (Christina Rossetti).
“Think,” says Cornelius a Lapide, “when lust goads thee, in thy hand and choice are heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, bliss or misery everlasting. Choose. Think. A moment which delighteth, eternity which tortureth; on the other hand, a moment which tortureth, eternity which delighteth.”
Q. What is the first inference hence?—A. What cause those have to bless God that have been kept from sin: though the best ought to be humbled for their heart’s pollutions. Q. What is the second inference from hence?—A. Let it warn parents to do what in them lies to prevent the ruin of their children by this sin. (1) By filling their heads and hands with lawful business. (2) By keeping them from vain and tempting company. (3) By serious admonition and prayers for them. (4) By disposing them seasonably in suitable marriage (Flavel).