Let us think now what the vows are which, at the altar of God, and in the presence of our fellow-creatures, we solemnly vow. Both the man and the woman vow to love, honour, cherish, and be faithful, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, till death part them. Then the husband promises to comfort his wife, and the wife to serve and obey her husband. A Scotch lady, whose daughter was recently married, was asked by an old friend whether she might congratulate her upon the event. "Yes, yes," she answered; "upon the whole it is very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then there's always a something." The old friend might have told this Scotch lady that in making light of love she made light of that which was needful to hallow her daughter's marriage; and that even the blessing of a bishop in the most fashionable church does not prevent a loveless alliance from being a sacrifice of true chastity. Contrast the indifference of this Scotch lady in reference to matrimonial love, with the value set upon it in a letter which Pliny the Younger, who was a heathen, wrote concerning his wife, Calpurnia, to her aunt. It is quoted by Dr. Cook as follows: "She loves me, the surest pledge of her virtue, and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learning, which she has acquired from her affection to me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even gets them by heart. You would smile to see the concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds means to have the first news brought her of the success I meet with in court. If I recite anything in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself privately in some corner to hear. Sometimes she accompanies my verses with the lute, without any master except love--the best of instructors. From these instances I take the most certain omens of our perpetual and increasing happiness, since her affection is not founded on my youth or person, which must gradually decay; but she is in love with the immortal part of me." The second vow taken by both the man and the woman is to "honour." "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel." "And the wife see that she reverence her husband." The weaker vessel is to be honoured, not because she is weak, but because, being weak, she acts her part so well. And even if the wife's courage and endurance should sometimes fail, a good husband would not withhold honour from her on that account. He would remember her weaker nature, and her more delicate physical frame, her more acute nervous sensibility, her greater sensitiveness and greater trials, the peculiar troubles to which she is subject.