# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S224
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

224 A Word on Civil Marriage from Nassau.

form the majority, all those outside will have to come into this house." —
The materialist's fixed idea, that he alone has grasped the truth, and that
all others who acknowledge the working of the living God are "narrow-
minded," rests entirely and completely on the same reasoning as the
conceit of that unfortunate man." (Neues Zeitblatt.)

———

(From Öhler's Kirchen-Blatt.)
A Word on Civil Marriage from Nassau. *)

There is now again much talk of civil marriage, especially in Prussia,
since in the United state church one sees, on the one hand, a wish to give
due weight to the clear commandments of God's Word concerning divorce
and "so let them remain," while on the other hand one sees that one
cannot manage one's flock in this way. Over this a loud outcry and
alarm now arises, not only from the Pietists, but even from many a
Lutheran, as if civil marriage were a spawn of the devil and could not
possibly be tolerated in a state that still lays claim to being a Christian
one; as if it were an open falling-away from all faith, and the like. —
What is going on in Prussia does us here in Nassau, for the time being,
neither good nor harm; but it is nevertheless necessary that we, on this
side and that, who stand bound together in the same single faith, also
hold proper discourse on this point as well — for cutting too sharply does
not cut, and pricking too sharply does not prick. Therefore the writer of
this permits himself, in order to prompt worthier men to make their
opinion known, to let his own thoughts on civil marriage be heard here,
as he, being a Christian and from the standpoint of the Word of God,
believes he must hold to them. —

Viewed from the standpoint of the Church, civil marriage, once sin has
entered the world, is to be fully acknowledged as an institution justified
in this world, because nowhere is the proposition overturned by
Scripture that marriage also has an outward, civil side, which the
worldly authority has to concern itself with. Hence it is already a kind of
civil marriage when, as is the case in many states, the worldly authority
regulates all the preliminaries to the married state, alone grants
permission to proceed to marriage, and finally assigns to the Church only
the joint declaration of the betrothed couple.

Moreover, marriage is nowhere in Scripture permitted only to
Christians, but assuredly to all people, including Jews and Turks. These
too must therefore be given the opportunity — certainly not by the
Church, but by the worldly authority — to come together outwardly in
proper form. Let no one object that Jews are, after all, married in their
synagogues according to

*) We can well feel, along with a Hengstenberg and others, the pain that grips them
now that, with civil marriage, the old bonds are being torn apart by which the state was
bound to the church; but we must entirely side with the above voice from Nassau in its
judgment of this change in German conditions.               L. u. W.