Far be it from us to depreciate the value of voluntary celibacy which is inspired by the love
of God. The mysterious word of our Lord, Matt. 19:12, and the advice and example of Paul, 1 Cor.
7:7, 40, forbid it. We cheerfully admire the self-denial and devotion of martyrs, priests, missionaries,
monks, nuns, and sisters of charity, who sacrificed all for Christ and their fellow-men. Protestantism,
too, has produced not a few noble men and women who, without vows and without seeking or
claiming extra merit, renounced the right of marriage from the purest motives.^606 But according to
God’s ordinance dating from the state of innocency, and sanctioned by Christ at the wedding feast
at Cana, marriage is the rule for all classes of men, ministers as well as laymen. For ministers are
men, and do not cease to be men by becoming ministers.
The Reformation has changed the moral ideal, and elevated domestic and social life. The
mediaeval ideal of piety is the flight from the evil world: the modern ideal is the transformation of
the world. The model saint of the Roman Church is the monk separated from the enjoyments and
duties of society, and anticipating the angelic life in heaven where men neither marry nor are given
in marriage: the model saint of the Evangelical Church is the free Christian and useful citizen, who
shows his piety in the performance of social and domestic duties, and aims at the sanctification of
the ordinances of nature. The former tries to conquer the world by running away from its
temptations—though after all he cannot escape the flesh, the world, and the Devil in his own heart:
the latter tries to conquer the world by converting it. The one abstains from the wedding feast: the
other attends it, and changes the water into wine. The one flees from woman as a tempter: the other
takes her to his heart, and reflects in the marriage relation the holy union of Christ with his Church.
The one aims to secure, chastity by abstinence: the other proves it within the family. The one
renounces all earthly possessions: the other uses them for the good of his fellow-men. The one
looks for happiness in heaven: the other is happy already on earth by making others happy. The
daily duties and trials of domestic and social life are a better school of moral discipline than monkish
celibacy and poverty. Female virtues and graces are necessary to supplement and round out the
character of man. Exceptions there are, but they prove the rule.
It may be expected that in the fervor and hurry of the first attempts in the transition from
slavery to freedom, some indiscretions were committed; but they are as nothing compared with the
secret chronique scandaleuse of enforced celibacy. It was reserved for later times to cultivate a
more refined style of family life; but the Reformers burst the chains of papal tyranny, and furnished
the practical proof that it is possible to harmonize the highest and holiest calling with the duties of
husband and father. Though falling short of modern Protestant ideas of the dignity and rights of
woman, they made her the rightful companion of the Christian pastor; and among those companions
may be found many of the purest, most refined, and most useful women on earth. The social standing
of woman is a true test of Christian civilization.
Melanchthon was the first among the Reformers who entered the state of matrimony; but
being a layman, he violated no priestly or monastic vow. He married, at the urgent request of his
friends, Katharina Krapp, the daughter of the burgomaster of Wittenberg, in November, 1520, and
(^606) We may mention the saintly Archbishop Leighton, Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the missionary Zeisberger, Dr. William Augustus Mühlenberg
(the founder of St. Luke’s Hospital In New York and of St. Johnland, and the singer of "I would not live alway"), the model pastor Ludwig
Harms of Hermannsburg, the historian Neander and his sister, and the nurses or deaconesses of Kaiserswerth and similar institutions.