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LESSON 7
GOD'S LAW OF MARRIAGE,—Continued.
50. God meant that human marriage should be a type of
Christ's union with the Church, or "New Jerusalem," His
bride. Christ laid aside all His glory with His Father and
came to this earth to unite Himself to us. But marriage was
not meant merely to typify Christ's first coming, but to
include the thought of His second coming as well; only in
both these events does the type fully represent the
antitype. Every Christian marriage should celebrate these
two events. The husband's renunciation of ties of kinship
should offset the wife's renunciation of self-love by taking
up the risks of childbearing and child rearing. This is what
Paul teaches, in Ephesians 5:31, 32, where he quotes
the obligation that the husband should forsake his kindred
for his wife, and adds, "I speak concerning Christ and
the Church." Adam and Eve were created at the same time,
and were together, and then they were separated during a
"deep sleep," which came upon Adam. So Christ was with us,
and then separated from us by the "deep sleep" of death,
while we came, as it were, from His risen side, by faith in
His shed blood. Adam was separated, that he might be
re-united to Eve, in greater joy than ever,—such joy that
poetry burst from his lips, in celebration of the event,
which Dr. R. F. Horton renders:
"She, she is bone of my bone,
51. And one day Christ will come again, "to our joy,"—for it
was "expedient" for Him to go, and return again, He told us.
And one day we shall recognize, as we do not now, that
Christ is our very "other self," as Adam did of Eve; "for
we are members of His body," and "joined to the Lord,"
we are "one spirit," also. Mary Magdalene seems to
have first discovered this, in experience,—for she exclaimed
to the supposed gardener: "Tell me where thou hast laid
Him, and I will take Him away,"—an unconscious
claiming of His body as her very own property, in a
love of sexless chastity. No wonder that He could but
manifest Himself to such love! (John 20:11-18).
52. The custom was, when Christ was on earth, for the
wedding procession of the bridegroom and his male friends to
go and fetch the bride from her father's house to his own
father's home. But Christ's parable of the Ten Virgins
(Matthew 25 :1-13), presents no such picture of the
violation of God's law. The virgins wait at the home of
the bride, and at the cry that the bridegroom is coming,
go forth to meet him, and fetch him and his train to a feast
at the bride's home. "Ordinarily the bride was fetched by
the bridegroom and his friends; but here it is the office of
the virgins to fetch the bridegroom, and the wedding seems
to take place in the house of the bride, as in Judges 14:10"
(De Wette, quoted by Lange). So will it be when Christ
comes again. Those who are waiting, and prepared for His
coming, at the cry of His coming, will go forth to "meet
the Lord in the air," and return to the earth, the
Bride's home, for the marriage feast, where they will live
and reign with Him a thousand years (see 1 Thessalonians
4:17; Revelation 20:6).
We have not been merely speculating as to the advantages
God's marriage law would secure to women. God's marriage
law was obeyed in the earliest ages of humanity.
This fact archaeologists are now bringing to light; and we
will give a short sketch (all we now have room for) of their
discoveries.
53. The first, in modern times, to write on this subject,
was Bachofen, a Swiss jurist, in 1861.
Mr. J. F. McLennan
became his exponent in English, as well as publishing
his own investigations of the subject. Many others, as
Tylor, Westermarck, Fraser, Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock),
and Robertson Smith have followed. In fact, no modern
history of an early people is considered complete unless it
begins with the days when there were matriarchs, as well as
patriarchs. In the 36th chapter of Genesis,
we discover that some
of the "dukes of Edom” were women.
54. Three leading features are characteristic of this early
civilization: (1) The parents of a wife, together with her
own kin, remain her "natural protectors" throughout life:
(2) the household property is held by the women; (3) kinship
is reckoned through the women, not the men, because when men
marry they are detached from their kin; the children are
known by the mother's family name. This form of civilization
is often called by the name, "female kinship," because the
3rd point mentioned is the cause of all the rest. For
instance, McLennan, in speaking of the decline in dignity of
Grecian women, says: "We see that no causes could
have produced it, so long as relationships through women
preserved their old importance. On the other hand, we can
discern a sufficient cause for degeneration in the gradually
increasing preponderance of male kinship, and in the changes
in the marriage system which made that preponderance."
55. We may ask, what brought about this change from female
to male kinship. Modern evolutionists who will not admit a
Divine revelation say that, first of all universal
promiscuity prevailed; and as no man knew his own children,
in consequence, therefore, female-kinship alone was
recognized. But the foremost evolutionists, Darwin and
Spencer, say that such promiscuity never prevailed; and that
is very strong evidence against the theory, for they were
the chief evolutionists. And besides, the Bible reveals the
truth to us, and we need not stay to consider the
evolutionists' theory. God's marriage law established female
kinship, in the beginning; and why should such a hateful
character as Lamech ever have been delineated in the Bible,
excepting to record the violation of this marriage law, and
the beginning of polygamy? A little further on, in the
opening verses of the 6th chapter of Genesis, we read of the
wholesale appropriation of women: "and the earth was
filled with violence," the record says. Lamech's son
"whetted cutting instruments," as we read, in chapter four;
and the first use of weapons of warfare was for the capture
of women. As these captive wives were torn from their
kindred, they became identified with their husband's kin, as
well as their children; and so male kinship came to pass.
The flood did not exterminate the habit of capturing women,
for we read, in judges, of Deborah waging war with Sisera,
for his crimes against women; and Sisera's mother is
represented as watching for her son's return with the spoils
of war,—"to every warrior a damsel or two."
56. Dr. A. C. Dixon, in an article in the London
Christian (Nov. 16, 1911) says: "Turn to this
civilization which God Himself founded, and you will hear
Him say: 'A man shall leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be
one flesh.' Woman is given the pre-eminence. It is not
the woman leaving the father and the mother, and cleaving
unto her husband; but it is the man leaving his mother and
father, and cleaving unto his wife." At one point we
disagree with Dr. Dixon. Civilization founded on this
marriage law of God did not make the wife her
husband's superior; but it prevented her becoming his
subordinate. In this connection the story of Jacob and his
wives, Leah and Rachel, is instructive. When he wishes to
leave his father-in-law, he humbly asks his wives to
accompany him. And they do not say: "It is our duty to
follow our husband," but, "We are warranted in going for two
reasons: Our father has given us no inheritance; and he has
kept for himself Jacob's wages, and they should have been
paid over to us, and our children" (Genesis 31:14-16). It is
evident, from this, that men did not sell their
daughters in marriage, where these women lived, nor did
wives feel bound, by marriage, to follow their husbands to
the ends of the earth. Scholars of note tell us that Abraham
said to Abimelech, Genesis 20:13, concerning Sarah, "Then
God caused her to wander with me," not simply, "when
God caused me to wander." The difference in the meaning
is this: It was not expected, in those days, that a wife
would follow her husband in his wanderings, but quite the
contrary. God wished Sarah and Abraham both to come out of
idolatrous surroundings; therefore He gives a revelation of
His will to Sarah, lest she should follow the usual custom
and remain with her kin.
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