The Young Lady's Counsellor by Daniel Wise

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. 235
phatically is this the fact, that marriage without
mutual affection is defilement and sin. Virtuous
love alone can give dignity and innocency to the
relation.
Henoe, the holy Scriptures enjoin husbands
to " love their wives," and wives to " reverence
husbands," with the same authoritative voice as
their
that
with which they enjoin marriage itself.
These are the only views of this subject, young
lady, that you can innocently entertain ;
and, in this
light, it will not harm you in the least to reflect
upon it. There are ideas, romantic, impassioned,
immodest, derived from impure novels and impurer
fancies, which you must prayerfully exclude from
the chambers of your soul, or they will prepaie you
for the tempter, and lead you captive into an untimely
marriage, if not into still deeper wretchedness.
But those loftier conceptions of it will only
stimulate you to cultivate those mental and moral
qua.ities which will fit you to enjoy tTie state and
to the exercise of a calm judgment in the disposal of
yrour affections.
Many young ladies indulge in very nonsensical