On the sixth day of creation God formed man out of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and gave him a companion, Eve, whom He drew in a wondrous manner from the side of the sleeping Adam. By so doing, God willed that couple to be the source of the human race, which was to be propagated by successive generations; and, in order that His wise designs might be the better accomplished, He endowed the union of man and woman with the qualities of unity and perpetuity (cf. supra, §§ 128, 129). Christ Himself taught that, by its very institution, marriage should be between two only; that the two became one flesh, and that the marriage tie was so close that no man could loose it (Matt. 19:5, 6). But the primitive perfection of marriage gradually became corrupted even among God’s own chosen people. Moses permitted them, on account of the hardness of their heart, to give a bill of divorce (Deut. 24:1). Among the Gentiles every sort of abomination prevailed, so that woman was degraded from being the man’s companion to be his drudge or his toy, and children became the mere chattels of their parents. These evils, however, were not to be without a remedy. Jesus Christ, Who restored man’s dignity and perfected the Mosaic law, took marriage under His especial care. He deigned to be present at the wedding feast at Cana, and made it the occasion of His first miracle. He reproved the Jews for their corrupt practices regarding marriage, and particularly forbade divorce. But He did far more. He raised matrimony to the dignity of a sacrament, thereby giving it the power to confer upon those who receive it the grace required by their state, and making it a figure of the union between Himself and His Church. “Husbands, love your wives,” says St. Paul to the Ephesians, “as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it.… Men ought to love their wives as their own bodies.… No man ever hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church; because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament (μυστήριον); but I speak in Christ and in the Church” (5:25 sqq.).

There are thus three stages in the history of marriage: marriage under the natural law; marriage under the Mosaic law; and marriage under the Christian dispensation. By the law of nature there was little restriction as to entry into the marriage state, but only death could dissolve it. Moses put limits to the competency of persons to marry (Lev. 18), but permitted divorce under certain circumstances. In neither of these two stages was marriage a sacrament. Christ restored the primitive prohibition of divorce, and made the marriage of Christians a sacrament. We are here concerned with this third stage.

Marriage may be considered as an act or as a state; in other words, either as a contract, or as a status arising therefrom. Natural marriage is a contract whereby a man and a woman are united for the purpose of generation and education of offspring. This contract, when between Christians, is a sacrament conferring grace upon those who are rightly disposed.