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Thy Maker
is
thine husband;
the LORD of hosts
is
his name;
and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel;
The God of the whole earth
shall he be called.
4
Fear not;
for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded;
for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.
Zec 8:15.
5
For thy Maker
is
thine husband;
the LORD of hosts
is
his name;
and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel;
The God of the whole earth
shall he be called.
Luk 1:31-32.
6
For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.
Isa 62:4.
Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.
23
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
1Co 11:3.
Eph 1:22.
24
…
25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
Gal 1:4.
Col 3:19.
The holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband.
2
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband.
Isa 52:1.
Isa 54:5.
2Co 11:2.
Gal 4:26.
Heb 12:22.
Rev 3:12.
3
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God
is
with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them,
and be
their God.
Lev 26:12.
Eze 43:7.
Family religion, marriage, and the bringing up of children
The supreme task is to spiritualise the relative natural connection of the three generations (grandparents, parents, and grandchildren)
and to make it unconditionally moral. This purpose is achieved in three ways — through
family religion, marriage, and the bringing up of children.
The natural groups which actually widen the life of the individual are the family, the nation, and humanity — the three abiding stages in the development of the collective man. Corresponding to them we have in the historical order the kinship-group stage, the nationally-political stage, and the spiritually universal stage. The latter may only be revealed on condition that the first two become spiritualised.
It will be asked whether the family is to form part of the final and universal organisation of morality or whether it is simply a transitory limitation in the development of human life. But the individual person
in his given condition
and in his selfish striving for exclusive separateness is also only a transitory stage, just like the nation or even humanity itself. It is not a question of idealising and preserving for all eternity the corruptible aspect of this or that living subject, but of discovering and setting aglow the spark of divinity hidden under the corruption, of finding the absolute and eternal significance inherent in the conditional and the temporal, and of affirming it not as a fixed idea only, but as the beginning of fulfilment, as a token of perfection. The positive elements of life in their relative and temporary manifesta tions must be understood and recognised as
conditional data for the solution of an unconditional problem.
In the case of the family these natural data are the three generations successively connected by the fact of birth:
grandparents, parents, and grandchildren.
The continuous and the relative character of the bond does not abolish its triple character as an abiding norm. The members of the series which extend beyond it on either side — great-grandparents and great-grandchildren — constitute no independent element in the idea of the family relation. The supreme task is to spiritualise the relative natural connection of the three generations and to make it unconditionally moral. This purpose is achieved in three ways — through
family religion, marriage, and the bringing up of children.
Eternal memory
From the point of view of religious morality, man lives in three different spheres: this world, the Kingdom of God and the Church.
We ask eternal memory of God and not of men, and it means
dwelling in the eternal mind of God.
“To grant eternal memory” means to make a man conformable to his eternal idea — to God s eternal thought about him, and to raise him to the sphere of the absolute and the changeless. By comparison with the anxieties of the world, it is eternal rest.
Death as such is not rest,
and the dead among natural humanity may be more appropriately described as restless (the French
revenant,
the German
Poltergeister]
than as those at rest. The rest we ask for our departed depends upon God's eternal memory of them. Affirmed in their absolute idea, they find in it a secure and indefeasible token that the perfect good will be finally realised in the world, and therefore they cannot be troubled. The distinction between the present and the future still exists for them, but no element of doubt or anxiety attaches to that future. It is separated from them only by an inevitable delay, and they may already contemplate it
sub specie aeternitatis.
But for those who die in the natural humanity, the future, though it becomes their main interest, still remains an awe-inspiring riddle and mystery.
We shall rise from the hills, from the waters, O Thorsten,
And whisper of the days to be.
Eternal rest is not inactivity.
The departed remain active, but the character of the activity is essentially changed. It no longer springs from an anxious striving towards a distant and uncertain end. It proceeds on the basis and in virtue of the already attained and the ever-abiding connection with the absolute good. Therefore in this case activity is compatible with serene and happy rest. And just as the beneficial influence of the departed expresses their moral connection with their
neighbours in nature,
their living posterity, so in their blessed rest they are inseparable from their neighbours in God and in eternity. It is rest with
the saints.
See also
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