an inverted way of saying that he lacks confidence in believing that he is immortal. They are both ways of saying the same thing. If the Church is right that the Christian is immortal, then clearly the Christian ought to believe it; that is to say, he ought to believe that he is immortal here and now, not necessarily in this world, but presumably partly in this world, partly in the next. And of course he should behave as though he believed he was immortal - if it is true. There is no point in trying to form a permanent friendship, unless you believe that you yourself are permanent, or immortal. But if you really do believe it, this is the obvious way to put your beliefs into practice.
Now marriage is among other things friendship. It is many other things as well, but it is also a friendship of a very close and intimate kind. The desire of husband and wife to make their marriage permanent is simply their desire to express a belief in their own immortality. They want to believe that it continues after death. Robert Browning expresses this thought beautifully in his poem, “Any Wife to any Husband”. So it is evident that the Christian's desire to know whether he will meet his wife after death is not an absurd or selfish request; it is a desire to know the truth about his relationship with her. His request is in fact a request to be told something about the nature of eternal life, the very thing with which the Church says it is concerned.
But the marriage service in the Prayer Book says specifically that marriage ends in death. It is therefore a temporary relationship; it is therefore not a true relationship; it is not even to be compared to honourable friendship, which can be permanent. According to the Prayer Book it is something entered into upon a basis of mutual calculation. In other words, if the Prayer Book is right, you can only get joined to a mistress or concubine in church; if you want to get married properly you must go to the Register Office, where you are at least free to believe in the immortality of the relationship you are about to enter into. Of course, as Euclid would have said, this is absurd. So the Prayer Book…