mutual pledges would be abundantly sufficient for themselves. But we are not permitted to suppose such a thing as isolation or separation from others, or from society. Our existence is necessarily complex, and our duties relative as well as personal, and therefore, marriage must be witnessed, and pledges given to society as well as made to each other, for the due fulfilment of the duties involved. A modern doctrine, if it may be called thus, has been set up that people who have mistaken their “affinities,” and only discovered their true ones after marriage, have a right to correct their mistakes and form a new marital union which they may suppose essential to their happiness. But they would disregard utterly their relations to others, their duties to society, their reciprocal obligations to their fellows, and trample on the fundamental principle of social order, indeed, society would itself be rendered utterly impossible could such individual caprice and selfishness prevail to any considerable extent. All their so-called arguments against the “institution” of marriage are, therefore, simply absurd, for while their conception of an essential portion of it may be correct enough as far as it goes, the assumption that the parties are alone responsible to each other, and are not called on to give pledges to society in the form of a civil contract or legal and indissoluble marriage, is founded on a total misconception or total disregard of their relations to others and of the duties necessarily involved. But enough on this point. Marriage is a natural relation that springs spontaneously from the necessities of human existence, and though a civil contract, it has a deeper and holier significance than the mere external ceremony or pledge which is thus given to the world as well as to each other.