CHAPTER XLII
LASTING MARRIAGES
Of course, if people are not really married as to mind and spirit, and are too far apart ever to harmonic, such marriages are not to be lasting. In this world for many reasons they may continue, and ought to do so if it is possible for people to get on at all.
But the idea back of marriage is its lasting nature. People who enter into marriage should do so with the idea of living together until death parts them. Why? Because marriage ought to be based upon mutual regard and affection, and if people love each other as they ought to do before they marry they will normally want to live together as long as life lasts. The nature of love is to desire to be with the loved one forever.
Possibly there is not a great deal of that kind of love in the world, and yet that is the way people ought to feel about the matter normally. Marriage is based on that idea. I believe that each one of us has only one true mate in all the universe. We are like a piece of paper that has been torn to two parts, the man is one part and the woman the other. It is impossible for one to be truly and permanently happy until the two separated pieces come together and fit into each other. That is ideal marriage.
You may say that it is romantic. Such an agreement between man and woman is certainly ideal. Husband and wife should perfectly harmonize. They should be attuned to each other as two instruments that are mutually responsive. A so-called man, one of the masculine gender, is only half a race man. A woman is only half a true human unit. Together they make one complete human unit, a complete man of the race type.
And my belief is that there is only one man for any given woman, making when united the perfect unit.
I believe that somewhere each one has his or her perfect mate, or complementary self. We may never meet in this life; may never marry here; but I believe that sometime, somewhere, here or hereafter, we shall meet, and the two parts will be united into the perfect one.
If we do not meet in this life, we are prepared for each other by the trials and disciplines of life, and when we meet hereafter we shall find ourselves married, a perfect one, to live together in ideal happiness to eternity.