2482.—Marrying Outside the Church.
By Editor
Why do Gospel ministers marry believers in the church with outsiders when it is so strictly forbidden in the Bible? How can those who profess to be God's chosen people, keeping His commandments, unite with outsiders in marriage? That was the first sin of God's people in the Jewish nation of old. The question which our inquirer propounds is capable of various answers. The ministers may not see the wrong of doing it. They may not understand the Scriptures. Let us hope that this may be the case with those who thus do. They may do it from the low motive that is put forth by some of those who sell intoxicating drinks, that if they do not do it, somebody else will. They may persuade themselves that in some way it will turn out for good, and that the converted one may win the unconverted. They do not wish to run the risk of offending friends. All these excuses to us seem to be utterly insufficient. We do not see how any instruction in principle could be stronger than that laid down in 2 Cor. 6:14-18. And then we have all the instruction given to God's people in the days of old, with the concrete examples recorded. One of these things will invariably happen if a church-member, a true Christian, marries an outsider, one who is not converted, or one who is wedded to false religious theories that he is not willing to follow God's word; first, the unbeliever will be converted; secondly, the Christian will give up his faith; thirdly, there will be divisions and trouble, and at the very least a large lack of confidence in each other, tending to misery and unhappiness between them; or, fourthly, one of them will die and the separation will be eternal. Now the first of these results sometimes follows, but it is very rare indeed, so rare that he who follows the practise of uniting in marriage those of religious faith with those of no faith, or those who are adherents to absolutely different views, take immense risk in becoming party to the union. One of the three last is almost bound to follow. Taking the probable ultimate result into consideration, the problem of rearing children in an atmosphere of religious difference or of religious indifference, and the many sad consequences of such marriages almost everywhere in evidence, we do not see how a Christian minister could officiate at such ceremony or give countenance to it whatever. We are not in this saying that persons of one creed are better than those of another, but where there are decided differences of conviction over the matter of religion,—which ought to be the highest of all considerations in the human life,—those convictions and differences would better be settled before persons unite in marriage. To act otherwise is to act contrary to God's word and to place oneself outside of the blessings assured in His promises.