There are marriages which seem to lack conjugial love, though it is present, and there are marriages which seem to have conjugial love, though it is absent. There are many reasons for this in either case, and these can to some extent be recognised by the discussion of truly conjugial love (57-73), the reasons for coldness and separation (234-260), and the reasons for an appearance of love and friendship in marriages (271-292). But outward appearance allows no conclusion to be drawn about imputation. The only conclusive fact is the marriage principle lodged in a person's will and preserved whatever the state of his marriage. This marriage principle is like a balance on which that love is weighed. For the principle of the marriage of one man with one wife is the jewel of human life and the repository of Christian religion (as shown above in 457, 458).

This being so, this love may exist with one partner, but not at the same time with the other. It may lurk too deeply hidden for the person himself to be at all aware of it; and it may also become imprinted as life proceeds. The reason is that this love follows hard on the heels of religion; and religion, being the marriage of the Lord and the church, is the starting point at which this love is injected. Conjugial love is therefore imputed to each person after death in keeping with his spiritual rational life. Anyone who has this love imputed to him has a marriage provided for him in heaven, whatever marriage he may have had in the world. The upshot of this is that no conclusion must be drawn about anyone having conjugial love or not, either from the way his marriage looks or from any immoral behaviour he appears to exhibit. Therefore

Do not judge for fear of being condemned. (Matt. 7:1.)

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