The pure humanness of marital relations.
The Sadducees rested their "denial of the resurrection on the ground that they found no mention of it in the Law, which they recognized as the only rule of faith." The mistake they made, which our Lord at once brought to view, was this—"They could not conceive of any human fellowship in the life of the resurrection, except such as reproduced the relations and conditions of this earthly life." Man's material for thought is mainly provided by the common, earthly, sensual relations and associations; but man does not become true man save as he rises above these, and, by the help of them, conceives the "unseen." It is the glory of man that he is able to create in imagination what he has never seen realized in fact. He can think of relations between beings in which no sex-elements are introduced. He can imagine a place where they neither "marry nor are given in marriage," and where the "propagation of the species" is not the dominant idea, as it is here. In the conception of such a place and condition, an all-sufficing answer was given to the subtle entanglement of these Sadducees.
I. THE RACE DEPENDS ON MARITAL RELATIONS. The law of sex is the universal earthly law, ruling the creatures as well as man. Seeding is the work of every plant; starting a new generation is the work of every living creature, and of every human being. And God has made this universally to depend on the relations of male and female. The fact that man has made misery and sin out of God's design must not blind us to the wisdom and goodness of that design.
II. CHARACTER DEPENDS ON THE MARITAL RELATIONS. Neither can man be true man, nor woman true woman, apart from marriage. This may be more impressively seen in woman, but it is equally true of man. Woman never reaches her noblest possibility save through motherhood.
1. Show what elements of character are developed, and what are refined, by the associations of marriage.
2. Show what moral good for the race comes through the influence on children exerted by those whoso characters are improved through the marital relation.
III. REDEMPTION DEPENDS ON THE MARITAL RELATIONS. Dr. Bushnell, in his very striking way, says the redemption of the world must mainly come about through the "out-populating of the Christian stock." There is a sense in which Christians will come to "possess the earth."
IV. RESURRECTION LIFE DOES NOT DEFEND ON MARITAL RELATIONS. There is
Established righteousness can have friendship without marriage.—R.T.