back to square -1 or -10000

[cat03]

My quaterly lesson is about marriages this month, and I just had to put these nuggets of wisdom here (and some from a book about the home from a very respected writer in my church) I'm actually going to give a copy of this pgs to my H, since he actually confessed to me he didn't know why he still had feelings for op:

"Pure and holy affection is not a feeling, but a principle, those who area actuated by true love are neither unreasonalbe nor blind...But the passion of the natural heart is another thing altogether...passion will be headstrong, rash, defiant of all restraint.
"That love which has no better foundation than mere sensual gratification will be headstrong, blind, and uncontrollable. Honor, truth, and every noble, elevated power of the mind are brought under the slavery of passions. The person who is bound in the chains of this infatuation is too often deaf to the voice of reason and conscience; neither argument nor entreaty can lead him to see the folly of his course.
"True love is not a strong, fiery, impetuous passion. On the contrary, it is calm and deep in its nature. It looks beyond mere externals, and is attracted by qualities alone. "

On Samson and Delilah:
"the narrative creates an impression of almost incredible stupidity on the part of Samson. At any time he could have put an end to Delilah's questioning by leaving her and returning to his home. But Samson's chief fault was no so much stupidity as sensual infatuation. In the ruin and shame that this sensual weakness brought upon him, and the way in which, step by step, it lead him to forfeit God's miraculous gift of supernatural strenth, lies the chief moral of the story"
"...At the very outset of life he was surrounded with favorable conditions for physical strenght, intellentual vigor and moral purity, but under the influence of wicked associates he let go that hold upon God which is man's only safequard, and he was swept away by the tide of evil. Those who in the way of dury are brought into trial may be sure that God will preserve them; but if men willfully place themselves under the power of temptation, they will fall, sooner or later"