cession to inheritances, to the decencies of civil order, and to the other various civil rights, privileges, and duties of secular life—all with a view to the well-being and happiness which flows, or ought to flow, therefrom to the community at large.

The second aspect refers mainly, if not exclusively, to the behests of a so-called, rightly socalled, higher law which deals with moral sentiments and judgments and an order of the invisible life which has a special regard to the well-being and happiness of the individual, as owing a supreme obedience to, and as existing in absolute dependence upon, the Creator and Rewarder of all, man by man.

The third aspect depends upon and is colored by those universal, or nearly universal, sentiments of human nature which, with a well-nigh irresistible force, impel every son of Adam and every daughter of Eve to seek in each other repose from an implacable uneasiness in solitude and a solace for a more or less distressful sense of self-insufficiency.

That is to say, the law of Nature being so almost exclusively invitatory it only remains for the office of both the State and the Church to be almost exclusively restrictive. The sexes by the fiat of their Creator may, must, will, come together. The State, as the appointed Curator of secular and temporal concerns, undertakes to say, for the general and

present good, and on this ground has the right to say, by what external modes and limitations that union shall be lawfully consummated.

Similarly, with as real or weightier sanctions, the Church, as the Curator of man's spiritual and eternal interests, ever and forever declares, by words and gestures but slightly varying in every age and land, with what sentiments and irrevocable vows that union must be sealed, for the health of the soul in time and for a preparation conducive to the yet more blessed life where "they neither marry nor are given in Marriage."

a

But there is one thing more, and an unpleasant thing it is, to be said here. Unfortunately, there exists in all languages, our own not excepted, a word too much in the thoughts, I firmly believe, and too much on the lips of Christian men dreadful word-we may well shiver in pronouncing it, or better not pronounce it at all-the opposite of Marriage, of happiness, of duty, of home -who can tell how often of Heaven? It occurs but twice, I believe, in the text of this book. I wish it had not been necessary to write it there. I am convinced that the fact itself is alien from the fact of a Christian Marriage, and the word from the meaning of the Christian Rite.

Yet this is the title of a book', from its high

'Divorce and Divorce Legislation, by Theodore D. Woolsey: New York, 1882.

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source much noticed a few years ago, written, apparently, for promiscuous circulation among Christian people by a highly respected Christian man eminent for his acquisitions, especially in Greek and Roman learning. I read his pages with every favoring prejudice. The result was two-fold. First, I felt an inexpressible disgust for the loathsome stuff raked together from every cranny of Pagan antiquity and modern legislation and served up in Christian vases—that is to say, in Christian nomenclature and in a body of many good observations'- for our entertainment and-improvement?

Then came over me the indelible wonder what result beyond the gratification of a prurient curiosity what real good, as the reward of his labora Christian man could imagine would accrue to Christian people, in their hearts or lives, from reading that unholy history.

Of course it will be understood that I am not speaking here of the necessary Police-duty of

One of the best, page 259: "If Marriage is more than a contract, if it is a state or condition of life, ... can we at all act on the principle that general rules ought never to press hardly in particular cases? If partnerships in business, by the rash judg ments of one member, may make the other bankrupt, may not," etc. Good, for human law. But the Christian law must add: "How much more when the other party is the Creator, God, also, and the transaction ratified by a perpetual promise given in His name."

modern civilization, a duty belonging essentially to the functions of the State, to preserve external order and to protect from external wrong-doing. Nobody doubts that the State may and must, in the exercise of her essential office, on occasion, enforce for a time or forever, an external separation from a dangerous, or outrageously unfaithful, or perhaps an incompatible matrimonial partner.' This is done, and rightly done, in foro legis publica. Here the Church has no part and need make no declarations. The decision of the when and how and how long, like all other external matters, must be left to the judgment of the State.

But beyond, and it may truly be said, above both these, the tremendous concern of Marriage, for every man and every woman, must come into the forum conscientia, and both the contracting parties must abide the eternal sanctions of that bar. The Church is not responsible for the decisions of the State, nor are individuals at large responsible for defective or incorrect decisions of either. But however State and Church, both or

I think it ought to be distinctly observed here (as hinted in the last note), though not in justification or palliation of any moral wrong at any time connected with it, that the civil marriage which alone the State undertakes to modify, or on occasion to destroy, is created by mutual consent only, and to a bond understood and defined by the civil law itself, requiring no appeal to God, or to the Church, and knowing nothing of any perpetual vows, whether to God, to the Church, or to each other.

either, may decide, every individual is responsible to the decision of his conscience and of that conscience instructed in righteousness.

Now I am saying that it is for the State alone, if she will, to use that dreadful word. She has no soul to save and no spiritual interests directly to conserve; nor need I allude here to any risks she may run herein in regard to external order.

But for the Church, which is the assembly of individual Christians, and for every individual Christian something very different is to be said. In all the formularies of the one, down through all the ages, there is no occurrence of that dreadful word, nor any shadow of a hint toward its modern meaning. In the forum conscientia of the other, there is no ground for the fact and no shadow of sanction for the indulgence of the wicked idea.

I am convinced that the dreadful word ought to perform no part in the education of Christian young people. It were better never to be pronounced within the precincts of a Christian family, never to fall on the ears of youth or maiden from parental lips or from any others. The thought will be in some degree polluting, as pitch cannot be handled with impunity. I am convinced it is the better Christianity, really the only Christianity, to spend effort rather in sowing wheat, than in devising the uprooting of tares; better to be doing prevention than making rules for cure; better to