of life and the infirmities of old age, this union is a source of mutual assistance and support. Another is the desire of family, not so much, however, with a view to leave after us heirs to inherit our property and fortune, as to bring up children in the true faith and in the service of God. That such was the principal object of the Holy Patriarchs when they engaged in the married state, we learn from the Sacred Volumes; and hence the angel, when informing Tobias of the means of repelling the violent assaults of the evil demon, says: " I will show thee who they are over whom the devil can prevail; for they who in such manner receive matrimony, as to shut out God from them selves and from their mind, and to give themselves to their lust, as the horse and mules which have not understanding, over them the devil hath power." He then adds: " thou shalt take the virgin with the fear of the Lord, moved rather for love of children than for lust, that in the seed of Abraham thou mayest obtain a blessing in children." [1] This was also amongst Note, the reasons why God instituted marriage from the beginning; and therefore married persons who, to prevent conception or procure abortion, have recourse to medicine, are guilty of a most heinous crime nothing less than premeditated murder. The third reason is one which is to be numbered amongst the consequences of primeval transgressions: stript of original innocence, human appetite began to rise in rebellion against right treason; and man, conscious of his own frailty, and unwilling to fight the battles of the flesh, is supplied by marriage with an antidote against the licentiousness of corrupt desire. " For fear of fornication," says the Apostle, " let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband;" and a little after, having recommended to married persons a temporary abstinence from the marriage debt, " to give themselves to prayer," he adds: " Return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency." [2]
These are ends, some one of which, those who desire to contract marriage piously and religiously, as becomes the children of the Saints, should propose to themselves. If to these we add other concurring causes which induce to contract marriage, such as the desire of leaving an heir, wealth, beauty, illustrious descent, congeniality of disposition, such motives, because not inconsistent with the holiness of marriage, are not to be condemned: we do not find that the Sacred Scriptures condemn the patriarch Jacob for having chosen Rachel for her beauty, in preference to Lia. [3]
These are the instructions which the pastor will communicate to the faithful on the subject of marriage, as a natural contract: as a sacrament he will show that marriage is raised to a superior order, and referred to a more exalted end. The original institution of marriage, as a natural contract, had for object the propagation of the human race: its subsequent elevation to
