I put beside each other two testimonies of men concerning their wives,
and let you see the contrast. An aged man was asked the reason of his
salvation. With tearful emotion he said: "My wife was brought to God
some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her
religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness, constantly
maintaining an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was
her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first
sent the arrows of conviction to my soul." The other testimony was
from a dying man: "Harriet, I am a lost man. You opposed our family
worship and my secret prayer. You drew me away into temptation and to
neglect every religious duty. I believe my fate is sealed. Harriet,
you are the cause of my everlasting ruin." How many glorious married
couples in heaven--Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Lapidoth and
Deborah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Zacharias and Elizabeth,
Joseph and Mary, and many whom we have known as good as the most of
them!
As once you stood in the village or city church or in your father's
house, perhaps under a wedding-bell of flowers, to-day stand up,
husband and wife, beneath the cross of a pardoning Redeemer, while I
proclaim the banns of an eternal marriage. Join your right hands. I
pronounce you one forever. The circle is an emblem of eternity, and
that is the shape of the Wedding Ring.