A chapter on marriage reforms would not be complete without some reference to our barbarous marriage service. Is it any good complaining about it, though? Ever since I learnt to read I have been reading attacks on it; apparently no one has a good word to say for it, not even clergymen, yet still it remains in use, unamended, just as it was written in the days of James I. If ever a man-made religious formula required revising to suit the progress of ideas it is this one. How can the Church expect us to regard marriage as a sacrament when its conditions are expressed in such coarse language and from so false a standpoint. Is it not false to glorify by inference those persons who have ‘the gift of continency,’ a ‘gift’ which, if common to the majority, would soon result in the extinction of the human race? This special clause is a horrible insult to a pure-minded, innocent bride, and is wholly unnecessary. Surely if no other improvement is made, this opening explanation of the ‘causes’ for which marriage was ordained might well be omitted, if only for the fact that it places last the principal reason for marrying--_i.e._ ‘for the mutual society, help and comfort.’ The Church of England might well take a lesson from the Quakers or from the New Jerusalem Church, a religious community founded on the writings of that great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. In the case of the Society of Friends, the procedure is simple in the extreme. After a time spent in silent prayer, the parties stand and, holding hands, say solemnly in turn: ‘Friends, I take this my friend, A. B., to be my _wife_, promising, through divine assistance, to be unto _her_ a loving and faithful _husband_, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.’ The New Church formula is longer, but equally beautiful and free from objectionable matter. II SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE TO HUSBANDS AND WIVES ‘One doesn’t want a lot of fine sentiments in married life--they don’t work.’ --W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM. The most valuable piece of advice it is possible to give a couple starting on the ‘long and straight and dusty road’ of matrimony is: ‘Blessed are they who expect little.’ The next best is ‘Strive to realise your ideal, but accept defeat philosophically.’ It is difficult to live happily with a person who has a very high ideal of us; somehow it creates in us an unholy longing to do our worst. Miranda often says to me: ‘The reason Lysander and I are so perfectly happy is because we never mind showing our worst side to each other, we never feel we need pretend to be better than we are.’ Mark this, Bride and Bridegroom; remember a pedestal is a very uncomfortable place to settle on, and don’t assign this uncomfortable elevation to your life’s partner. More marriages have been ruined by one expecting too much of the other than by any vice or failing.