The process of getting and staying married is severely malfunctioning in our land. With the divorce rate in the church statistically indistinguishable from the unbelieving world, it would not be considered hyperbole to say that today’s marriages in the church are a moral disaster.

Because we have slowly adopted the ways of the world in nearly every area of life in order to maintain our respectability, we have lost our ability to properly join our children in marriage and have left our children to a broken, godless system.

In 1859, a pastor wrote a book on home life that included instructions to Christian parents on helping their children marry. That godly counsel given to us by the Reverend Samuel Philips is reprinted here as a timely reminder of the wisdom of God for all family life.