ment, assuming that my readers know it—that the man who, with an air of superior wisdom, declares, in a first-class literary review, in this century, that Paul and the early Christians were so absorbed in the idea of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world that they gave no time to domestic duties, or any consideration to domestic responsibilities, is either an unread fool or a willful knave. The New Testament is literally full of beautiful sayings regarding the simplest duties of man to man, and of husbands to wives, and of children to parents; and if Mr. Ingersoll will himself take up the New Testament and try to shape his life by its spirit, for one year, I wager my life he will cease to be an atheist or an infidel, and that he will become even a nobler and a better man than he is to-day, and we all give him credit for being a good man now. I am not touching his personality, only his public utterance on the question of divorce. As to the real New Testment view of the question, it is pretty generally agreed that Jesus meant what he said,—that a man should not put away his wife for any and every trivial or serious cause, but only for one cause. It is not by any means clear that even here he meant to justify the so-called absolute divorce of our modern courts of law; and at least it is clear that, for so-called Christendom,—or for that part of the world, or the communities, that take His sayings to be final and divine,—the cause named is the only admissible and sufficient cause for divorce. But even this, if granted its fullest force, would not justify the laws of New York, or of any other state or nation, in granting to women and men alike absolute divorce on the ground named. I suppose that, if any man had asked Jesus on what grounds a woman might seek absolute divorce from her husband, he would have told him, By hiding her shameless head in the blackest death's-hole of the valley of Gehenna. And I suppose that, if any so-called Christian woman had come to Jesus to ask him to help her get a divorce from her husband, who, in certain fearful strains and stresses of life, had been unkind to her for a moment, Jesus, after learning the facts, would have urged her to cleanse her body and soul of all foulness and falsehood and cowardice and hardness, and so conquer the heart of her husband that he would rather die than be unkind to her again.

While some of the inconsistent judges and preachers were airing their high morals on this theme at a public meeting in the city of Philadelphia toward the last of October. 1889. the Philadelphia Inquirer published an interesting interview with Rabbi Sabots Morias in "How to get a 'get.'" Here is the pith of it:—

"On what grounds are 'g'ts' granted?"—"Oh, on the same grounds that they are obtained in your courts, infidelity and incompatibility of temperament being the principal grounds." —"Can not the women get a 'get'?"—"No, sir; the wife is never given a 'get.' Under the Mosaic law, she belongs to her husband, and he is responsible for her to all mankind."— ■"How are 'gets' regarded in different countries where the Hebrews reside?"—"They g<"t recognition in England, being granted there by the chief rabbi; and the court holds that his granting is legal. The 'get' used to be recognized in Italy before the new government; but now new laws have been enacted, and the civil courts must act in the premises. England recognizes the divorce laws of the Hebrews the same as it does the marriages. Both marriages and divorces of the Hebrews are recognized by law in all eastern countries."

So I introduce the Rabbi to say one thing plainly that I had meant to say, and so help me to my conclusion. Woman's rights may be excellent material for rampant, termigant female free speech; and they may have something to do with the sort of millennium Robert Ingersoll has in mind. I find, for instance, that in Pennsylvania a husband, deserted by a miscreant wife, cannot obtain divorce from her unless the desertion is persisted in for at least the space of two years; but that such faithless and recreant wife, who has eaten and drunk her husband's flesh and blood for a quarter of a century without giving him any equivalent whatever in return—that such recreant wife can appear before the courts of Philadelphia, swear to lies touching his character, get her friends to aid her in her crime, press his and her children—blinded by false sympathy—into her service, and so, by swearing to lies regarding her husband's life and character, can get an absolute divorce from him inside of six months from the time she deserts his home and steals away from him the bodies and souls of their children. And I find that so-called Christian lawyers and judges will wink at this, and for money will help her in her nameless and eternal crime. And I suppose that, in a case where the man has money, and is characterless, he can do pretty nearly the same; though it is plain to me that the laws of Pennsylvania, as interpreted by our Christian lawyers and judges, are as far removed from the letter and spirit of the New Testament as hell itself is far removed from all ancient and modern Edens over whose spaces the breath of roses and of angels hovers, through patience and constancy, unto death.

And here I name my cure for domestic and other ills, and I know there is no other cure. Patience and charity will hide a multitude of domestic as well as other sins. The woman who has been false to one man will be false to others. Very few homes are domestic Edens. It is the work of a life-time to make them such. We are not in this world to be rocked into atheistic slumber by Ingersoll dreams. It has taken God and nature at least six thousand years (some geologists say sixty millions of years) to make a proper helpmeet for a decent man, and the business still seems to be in a state of amateur imperfection. There are lots of women but few wives. Do not talk to me of "companions" and "equals." No two dogs are equal, much less any single or double pair of married or single women and men. It is not equality, much less cowardice and divorce, that this age needs to have preached to it, lived for it, but duty, truth, honor, forbearance, charity, constancy, mercy and peace. Away with your shameful apologies for salvatin and reform of society! Do the simplest duty at hand and all hell cannot lead you to seek a divorce.

I was one of the first American students of Lecky to point out his now famous saying that for nearly five hundred years no divorce was granted in Rome. I did not then, and I do not yet, pretend to know how much or how little it tells for the domestic peace or purity of that period. I long ago satisfied myself, however, that it does not presuppose or prove any exceptional state of virtue in the Rome of that era. I have read a great deal on this head, but have got little light. There can be as much vice without divorce as with it. I am not simply pleading against divorce, as if, without it, we were saved from social hells. It is only by something higher and purer than the old Romans knew or practiced that modern society can be saved.

I have looked into the laws and practices of other ancient and modern Asiatic, European and African races and nations touching this question of marriage and divorce. I am satisfied that the legalized polygamy of the Asiatics, the Turks, and our own poor Mormons, is far preferable to our modem promiscuity of prostitution and legalized divorce. I am also satisfied, however, that the highest Holy Spirit of the New Testament, from which modern law and modern life have alike drawn whatever is worthy in them—I am satisfied that this spirit points to a pure monogamy of chastest virtue and constancy, under all stress, until death: and that, to attain this in general, modern life, lived by whole millions of us. will have to suffer for the sins of others and for our own sins, until the divine law of holiest charity—even between husbands and wives—shall captivate the world.

I am still further satisfied that there is a higher ideal than this, wherein a man, if he feels so called, may walk face to face, in chastity and purity,—hand in hand with the Eternal Father; bearing the world's burdens without knowing its keenest joys, as hundreds and hundreds of Christian men and women are doing in all modern nations every year. And the atheistic blatherskite who knows no more of life than to make sport of this ideal, as announced by Jesus, and advocated as the ideal dream of Christian life, is simply a pitiable blockhead. Even in this age of reckless, universal embezzlement, there is no robbery so criminal as that which goes on in a human home when either one of the two parents becomes false to the other, and, by posing for sympathy, or by other subtle vice, steals the hearts of the children from the other parent,who. by nature and eternal law, has an equal share in and an eternal right to the love and respect of those children: and. of all the twisted, tortured and pitiable things in this world, there is no object so shameless, so false to and lost to nature,—so out of tune with all that is sacred in heaven and earth,—as a child so hardened toward and estranged from its father or mother. Gods and angels weep over such children, and their ways through life are an endless, subtle blasphemy. Every thing that encourages the thoughts of marital separation; every law or influence looking toward and aiding divorce, becomes the demoniac parent and helper of all these evils, and hence the source of the subtlest and most vitiating evils, vices and crimes known to mankind. In the face of it all, I quote the New Testament: "Charity suffereth long and is kind;" "Charity never faileth;" "Beareth all things. He that endureth to the end is saved;" "Be thou faithful unto death."

It is much easier to make sport of the Bible than it is to write any word that will compare with it in clearness, wisdom and power. It is as easy as it is popular, in these days, to pose as the friend of woman, to laugh at the "old exploded story of Eden," which seems to blame her for her share of social evil and crime. I have lived through that phase of popular sentimentalism; have mixed a great deal with the women and men who laugh at the Eden story, hold the Mosaic law as absurd, consider Paul an old fogy, and Christianity a silly, obsolete, sentimental dream. I have probed this crowd of modern scientific and reform wiseacres to the bottom, and I unhesitatingly pronounce them a set of half-taught clowns. My present conviction is that the beautiful story of Eden was and is true to nature and history at all hours—to this the latest hour of time; that the Mosaic law, taken as a whole, is better at this hour, and more consistent, than the total laws of the United States, especially on the marriage question; that Paul had more sense in a day than Robert Ingersoll and all modern infidelity combined have in a dozen modern years; and that Jesus was simply the divine man he claimed to be, and will yet rule the world: hence, as by law of nature, that any one clear word from the Old or New Testament, touching this matter of marriage and divorce, is worth any million words that Robert Ingersoll & Co. can possibly utter on the subject. And I hold all this on purely rational, inductive grounds: that is, I have honestly and fearlessly, these last twenty years, without regard to any belief in the existence of a God, or any theories of biblical inspiration, compared