nature of the anti-theistic systems is forced to stand out in bold relief by the common error running through them all. As ex emplied strongly by materialism, this common error consists in an inveterate tendency to substitute a narrow part for the broad whole. Hence, it occurs that while all these schools express trath to a certain extent, they always fail as permanent and practical world-theories, and seldom even grow beyond an evanescent cult of the day, largely because of this mutual tendency to seize but one aspect of reality and emphasize it to the exclusion of the rest Such being the case, the only conclusion to be arrived at is that there are more things in heaven and earth than are even dreamt of in anti-theistic philosophy. And so it follows of necessity as the night the day that:

"Those little systems have their day.
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee;
And, thou, O Lord, art more than they."

Chicago, 111. Adrian M. Dooli.v

THE INFAMY AND BLASPHEMY OF DIVORCE.

Glances At Milton, Inghrsoll And Others.

By the infamy of divorce, I refer to the withering and blasting effects of it on the conjugal, domestic, parental, filial, social and national life of the world. By the blasphemy of divorce, I refer especially to the legal and spiritual aspects of it; to the godless and impudent assumptions of the courts, laws, lawyers and judges of our civil states that they have the power or the right to sunder, annul and destroy the oaths, bonds and the unutterably sacred relationships voluntarily entered into by the act of marriage,—that they have the right or the power to abrogate and cause to cease all or any of the rights and duties and obligations entered into at and by the state of marriage; further, to the blasphemous effects of these assumptions as seen in the dulling and hardening of the

moral and spiritual sense in parties seeking and procuring divorce, and, supremely, in the lowering and withering of these faculties in the children of divorced parents. And I pray that my words on this theme may be so clear, so human, so powerful, that demons in and out of perdition, who inspire divorces, and their slaves on earth who fan the demons' fires and encourage divorces, may be brought to shame, to selfcontempt, and such hiding of their benighted, or willful and wicked heads, that a purer light may come to the world through such broken speech as I am able to utter.

Nearly twenty years ago, after I had voluntarily withdrawn from the orthodox ministry, and was for a time in partial association with a church and a ministry inclined to regard divorce much in the trivial light that they regard the Atonemenet, and at a time when my own personal affairs led me to favor the arguments advocating divorce, I took up the study as a specialty, determined to act and abide by my rational conclusions, regardless of all biblical or church authority. At that time I read and studied whatever I could lay hold of bearing on divorce. I re-examined every passage in the Old and New Testament, precisely in the spirit that I would examine any other author's written word: not as divine authority, but as honest human experience; giving, however, such added respect to these biblical sayings as is due them from the fact that great bodies of good and wise men have again and again held those writings to be in some sense inspired and divine; still not only determined in my own case not to be bound by them, but confessedly, in those years, with an inclination not to be bound by them, but to seek light elsewhere.

In this spirit I read and studied all that John Milton had written about divorce. Milton was then next to a god in my estimation, and his pungent and learned words had great weight with me. At the same time I went over afresh "The Life of Cranmer;" read again Shakespeare's "Henry VIII.," with a view of getting the pith of truth on divorce out of all that marvelous episode of human history. It was a sort of life-and-death struggle with me on a theme that the greatest of modern men seemed to my instincts to be wrong, and hence misguiding me; though the arguments of Milton, and the reasons given by poor Cranmer, and the shufflings of that famous Bluebeard, the father of the Church of England,—all seemed to have more or less of reason and right sight in them.

After a while I saw, against my will, that Milton was a special pleader for his own life; that Cranmer was an honest placeman and a weakling; (except in death: God bless him for dying like a man, if he could not live so!) and that the whole "Henry VIII." business was a sensual lie, resulting in a —"virgin queen," and Heaven only knows what other curses on the British nation and other nations up to these last hours. And now, though I still love and admire him, I despise John Milton as the pitiable prophet of a fearful blasphemy on this matter of divorce; and it is clear to me that he and the likes of him are largely responsible for the cant and idiocy on this theme that are cursing New England and the whole United States and other modern nations,—a sentimental idiocy that has found its latest utterance over the name of Robert G. Ingersoll, in the last November number of the North America* Review.

I think that the wives of Socrates and Milton and Carlyle ought to have been gagged, or starved to death, or hung, if after due process found incapable of performing the proper functions of wives to their famous husbands. I am well aware that the old Grecian, and the old Englishman, and the more recent Scotchman, were pretty tough husbands; not by any means such domestic angels as some modern infidels are supposed to be. I am not apologizing for the cranky crotchetiness of any husband, no matter how much of a literary or other genius he may be. My conviction is that a married man ought to rise superior to all shrewish provocation. Socrates seems to have managed that phase of the domestic business better than Milton or Carlyle. Milton's Xantippe, however, may have been ten times more trying than the Greek woman; and nobody has any business judging any of these people in their private, domestic ties or untying: but Socrates was never fool enough to twist the divine verities and eternities into labored arguments in favor of divorce, simply because nature, or Providence, or his own pliability, had given him a tormenting irntant, instead of a helpmeet, for a wife. Carlyle, though plainly unable to govern his temper under the goading of an admiring but unloving, rasping, aggravating wife, still was man enough to hold to the eternal truths of honor and obligation; was sensible enough to hold right on till death, though it is plain that he never knew an hour of real freedom or peace till after his wife was dead. Above all, he never gave the splendid powers of his pen or his intellect to defend or countenance the modern blasphemy of mere weaklings, known as salvation by divorce. So Milton was the only one of this famous trio who used his God-given powers to flout God and argue down his word, and so lead modern civilization hellward, till a new turning-point be given it by some braver and wiser and better man.

So I at last saw Milton, long years ago, and so seeing him, saw, also, that his special pleading in favor of divorce was simply the weak, illogical, faltering, stammering error of a tried and deluded soul. I honor and love the man, but despise his reasonings on the question of marriage and divorce; that is, I simply know that his premises and his conclusions on this head are all unsound and damnable. Seeing this clearly nearly twenty years ago, I saw, at the same time, that all arguments in favor of divorce were and ever would be mere special pleadings, sometimes based on personal grounds, as in Milton's case, sometimes on grounds of maudlin, truthhating sentiment, as in the case of Robert Ingersoll, and still more frequently the result of mere bestial, contemptible and pitiable animal weakness. But how did I see that Milton was so wrong? that the conclusions in favor of divorce generally were and are so wrong?

Here let me clear the reader's mind of error and cant touching my own position, and the position and relation of this subject to the Scriptures and to the Christian Church—any and all branches of it. I found in my earlier studies that, on this theme, as on all others, expert reasoners could honestly enough find passages of Scripture to favor their arguments, pro as well as con. Moses and the law could and can be twisted and mirrored either way; Jesus and the Gospels can be turned and twisted and mirrored either way: and while an instinctive moral sense, which is wisdom, which is God in the soul, which is always divine, and to be followed, taught me long years ago that the spirit of the Old and New Testament was against divorce and favored a very far higher solution of domestic troubles, still I did not, on that account, decide against divorce years ago. Nor did I decide against it because the Roman Catholic Church opposed it, or because the general Protestant orthodox churches were nominally against divorce. On the contrary. I saw then, as I see now, that very much of this ecclesiastical opposition to divorce was, if not insincere and pharisaical,— which I am always loth to attribute to any church or man,— at least very apt to be slippery, yielding to circumstances, partial to wealth and to people of position; in a word, disloyal to its own nominal convictions and doctrines. Hence, on all these grounds, the position of the Christian Church, as expressed by its representatives, tended to aid me in a conclnsion favorable to divorce rather than against it; for if anything can provoke me to take the opposite side, even contrary to my instincts, it is the hypocrisy, or cringing, contemptible shuffling of the friends of any good cause. To put it short, the Bible and the Church did not help me to conclude against divorce; though I have no doubt that the same spirit which moved Jesus to utter his best words on this theme moved me also, albeit on different grounds, to take even a stronger position against divorce than can, in perfect candor, be attributed to him.

What, then, was it which led to this unalterable and earnest conclusion? Simply this, my friends: I had children of my own; I remembered my own parents, and a certain sacredness of home relationship between me and my own children, and my own parents and their and my earlier home. It was, in a sense, an ideal home. There was not always peace; but cursed be the thought and life of any child or man or woman who would foul the nest his parents made for him! I leave a million thoughts unuttered here that a sentimentalist like Ingersoll would make much of, and I simply keep to the spirit of the theme, and wish to speak of a sense of duty. I studied the sacredness of home life; the finer instincts of children; their sensitive natures; my own nature. I studied