Let the unbiased reader, interested in the nauseous subject of justifiable divorce, read of divorce, marriage, and their allied subjects of cruelty, brutality, adultery, nullification of marriage, impedimenta, concubinage, and celibacy of the clergy, as revealed in all their hard-headed variety in the history of the church in the Middle Ages, when the holiest thing in life,— Christian marriage, with its mutual courtesies, refinements, and forbearances, its sacred joys and sorrows, its aspirations, exhilarations, its tender sympathies and endearing affections,― was made to appear unclean and repellent by the polluted botchery of coarse-minded men, bachelors, too, supposed to know nothing practically of it, except what they learned from reprobate men and women in the confessional. Let such a person farther interested in this subject read Henry C. Lea's "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy," filled as it is with the most authentic and startling incidents, and he can hardly believe the self-revealed iniquity of those times, as a result evidently of the attempted adoption of the unscriptural view of marriage and of celibacy. Mistress-keeping by priests was not only universal, but was universally recognized and admitted because horrors!of its being supposed a safeguard for the wives of parishioners!

Councils frequently came together to correct abuses, and at these meetings canons were passed over and over again in those holy days to prevent the not unusual custom of priests' incestuously living with their own mothers and sisters. It was even found neces

sary to enact laws condemning priests from practicing unnatural crimes.

In some places canons were made to give a sort of legitimacy to the children of priests, and laws were quite common to prevent priests from leaving to the mothers of their illegitimate children the profits of their benefices. See Fisher's "The Cause of the Increase of Divorce."

“It is a remarkable fact," says Mr. Fisher," that the only time when it has been possible to maintain a priesthood that was celibate in anything more than name, has been since the Reformation, when priests have been obliged to live up to the standards of Protestants."

The comparative decency and purity of modern times have been brought about by men who believe in divorce as Christ taught it and in the sacredness of marriage, by men who have lived within the prescribed circle of the contract, without considering it so very much more sacred than any other serious and responsible obligation, and who do not believe in the indissolubility of marriage except as the Bible teaches, that is, with a limitation.

Many of the saints have written the most disgusting things about marriage as they in their coarse imagination conceived it to be, or else as it was revealed to them in the confessional of a debased people. "Adultery to some of them was but a mere incident," to which anybody, even a priest, might fall a victim, “as compared with the continual foulness," as they declared it, "of marriage."

St. Augustine asserts, evidently because of his knowledge of the customs of his times, that "it would be better to have no marriage, as he knew it,”— for like many of the saints, he was a converted rake," and to bring the human family to an end than to have marriage." It is difficult to conceive of a saint's being so savage. And his successors since have taught the paradox slander on humanity,—namely, that marriage was an indissoluble sacrament and also indissolubly disgusting.

CHAPTER VI

THERE are certain anomalies in connection with divorce and marriage, as defined by the medieval or Catholic church, that are calculated to perplex and confuse the reader. Indeed, they are difficult enough to demand the service of skilled canonists for their disentanglement. In attempting to reconcile or to understand them, we might say with the Psalmist, "such knowledge is too wonderful for us."

Although she declares that marriage can only end with the death of one or both the contracting parties, and "if anybody says otherwise, let him be accursed," yet in the face of such an assertion she cites several instances when it can be dissolved, even without violation of the seventh commandment. And that, too, with the right of the separated parties, one of them, to marry again while the other spouse is still living.

For example, if two Catholics have been married by a priest, and the wife subsequently finds greater peace in another communion than she ever found in her own, and connects herself with that communion, the act is called "lapsing into sin." And if she persists in this wickedness, adhering to a non-Catholic denomination, it gives the husband the right of securing an absolute divorce and marrying another woman. This no other Christian church permits. Christ did not permit it.

It is not permitted by any civilized people. Even Mohammedans, Japanese, or Chinamen do not allow divorce for such a reason.

Again. If a Catholic is married to a non-Catholic, and she insists on bringing up their children according to the tenets of evangelical Christianity, unless he has had a dispensation," he can secure an absolute divorce and marry another woman. No civilization, pagan or Christian, nor any reformed church permits this, because it is contrary to the word of God, which declares that there is but one cause for divorce with the privilege of re-marriage, and this is not it. Her husband could not be divorced from her absolutely, if she committed adultery, but he can, if she joins another Christian communion.

This, it would seem, makes Reformed Church membership after marriage to a Catholic a greater crime than impudicity.

The Roman church again contradicts her dogma of the indissolubility of marriage by declaring that if a baptized person is married to an unbaptized person, and the unbaptized person desires to depart, absolute divorce may be granted to the baptized person,— that is, the Catholic husband,- and he may marry again while his first wife is still living. This, too, is contrary to the civil law of all civilized lands, and if sanctioned by the Bible, the Bible does not say so.

According to Christ, he could not marry again because the supposititious man's separation from his wife does not seem to have been because she was im