marriage is explained. What arrests the attention most surely is the
resemblance that exists between the experience of our first parents
and of their descendants, or between Adam and Eve and ourselves. The
"It is not good for man to be alone," spoken by God in Eden, embodies
a truth which has lived with the ages, and sets forth an experience
felt by every son of Adam. The words "I will make for him a helper
suited to him," is man's authority for the faith, that somewhere on
the earth God has made a helper suited to him, whom he will recognize,
and who will return the recognition. For in all true marriages, now as
in Eden, the man and woman do not deliberately seek, but are brought
to one another. Happy those who afterwards can recognize that the hand
which led his Eve to Adam was that of an invisible God. Man knows that
it is not good for him to be alone. Separated from woman's influence,
man is narrow, churlish, brutal. Woman is a helper suited to him. With
her help he reaches a loftier stature; for love is the very heart of
life, the pivot upon which its whole machinery turns, without which no
human existence can be complete, and with which it becomes noble and
self-sacrificing.

Woman's origin is thus declared:--

"And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he
slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its
place. And of the rib which he took from the man God formed a woman,
and brought her to the man. And the man said, This now is bone of my
bones, and flesh of my flesh. This shall be called Woman, because from
man was she taken. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh."[A]
_Woman was taken out of man_. It is man's nature to seek to get her
back. He feels that a part of _him_ is away from him, until he obtains