On Marriage.
I. Consider how the earthly and the heavenly views of Christian marriage which the Apostle presents to us are thoroughly one, and cannot be separated. It was an old delusion that the Christian who wished to give himself up to the influences of the Spirit, to obtain the salvation of his soul, and to win even in this life something higher than its transitory things, could do no better than to withdraw himself as far as possible from this world and to flee at once from its pleasures and its business, its sufferings and its cares. From this delusion arose a long-continued and mistaken idea of looking on the holy state of matrimony. How very far is this delusion from being sanctioned by the Apostle's words. For when he points to the connection between Christ and the Church, is that union in any sense identified with a morbid contemplative life? Must it not have cost the Lord toil to take captive all these thousands? It is only in common, social life that men's happiness and well-being have room to grow, and only by a judicious division of work that each becomes distinctly conscious of his own powers; and so also it is only through this Divine arrangement that we find out what special gifts the Spirit of God has created in each family, and both husband and wife, earnestly working together at their everyday duty, at once find out what is their own work and enjoy their work in the vineyard of the Lord.
II. While there is in these two sides of marriage a great apparent dissimilarity, it is needful that we be convinced that even this dissimilarity resolves itself into the most perfect likeness. Look, first, at the dissimilarity. When the Apostle says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, we know that this is a love which not only permits, but requires, love in return, seeing how constantly we are exhorted to love Him who has so greatly loved us; but we know also that it is, from another point of view, a love that is raised far above all reciprocal love, seeing that the Church cannot in any way repay Christ, her Redeemer, and can do nothing for Him, but only go on receiving from Him a more and more complete redemption. Now if, in the same way, the wife can do nothing for her husband, but be always receiving from him, then the wife is in a bad case as regards the husband, and the woman is always at a disadvantage. But let us remember that it is impossible for a comparison between Christ and men to apply at every point; and of course the relation of wife to her husband cannot in every particular present a parallel to that of the Church to Christ. Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify her; the husband is to take this self-sacrificing love as his example, gladly returning from his wider circle in the busy world to the quiet of his fireside, there to share with the wife of his heart all that is purifying or elevating in what he has met or done or felt. And thus in their life together will be more and more fully realised that which is only promised to the Church in her relation to Christ in the distant future, that we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is, as the wife, without leaving her quiet, modest sphere, becomes ever more like her husband, because she both understands and influences him in all his ways and actions.
F. Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons,p. 130.
References: Ephesians 5:22-31. W. E. Colles, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 99. Ephesians 5:23. J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 265.Ephesians 5:25. G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons to English Congregations in India,p. 44; H. P. Hughes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxv., p. 266.