Marriage--Love--and Solid Substance

Marriage is a subject for all seasons, and we should like to suggest some sentences that apply to marriages in the making as well as to those already made, and would introduce the subject with a statement that may be considered questionable by some: that character in marriage is as important as love⎯and maybe more so.

This may seem to slight the matter of romance⎯to slight somewhat the sweet and tender lovely things of life on which the poets and the songsters have written ten thousand times ten thousand lovely and poetic lines.

There is no doubt about the loveliness of sincere, respectful, loyal, honest love, and the real and indispensable and surpassingly important place it has in the good living of life. From all these lovely things we would subtract nothing. But the plain and earnest fact is that love and loveliness will not likely live unless sustained on solid substance.

Love is more than music. It is more than moonlight. It is more than mood. It is more than a passing romance. Love, in order to live, to endure, to last a long and everlasting lifetime, must include some solid, sustaining, basic qualities of character: respect and honesty; integrity and trust and truth; faith and faithfulness, loyalty; cleanliness and morality; courage and confidence; kindness and consideration; an honest ambition as to something good and useful Ato be@; the honoring of obligations; and the doing of duty in the day-to-day living of life.

We would say again to all who are married, and to all who approach marriage, and to all who are faced with the soul-searching, far-reaching, sobering decision as to when and how and whom to marry: Love with all its cherished loveliness is likely to survive only as it is sustained by sincere and solid substance, and to keep love alive, character is everlastingly required.