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Show tly cll-lVA'.ty of the parties to the contract should be required, Mr; Cot!) said, and the . applicants should bo' examined by the clergyman nuder oath. The offense ofy marrying thilJrtn and idiots should be inade a felony. If there is any. reason, he said, why parties can not get married at home by clergymen clergy-men who know them, they should not be. married at all. 'vIt is the duty of every clergyman, to use all means in his power to ascertain- the truth. No one but clergymen and Jadges of courts of record, should - have authority to perform marriages. A license should ,be required before marriages are performed per-formed and the- divorce laws should be made alike in all States, with but one ground for absolute divorce. . , . The LUnlster as a Lawbreaker. It is not often that the ministers are frankly told of their own sins, but a little dose Qf this kind of medicine now and then is certain to benefit the men of the cloth. At a recent meeting of the Jefferson County, New York., Ministerial union, District Attorney At-torney George H. Cobb preached a sermon to the preachers, i tt being 'vThe Minister as a Lawbreaker." Law-breaker." The dominies would not have been startled star-tled more had Moses himself appeared to read them a lesson from the Tables of "the Law. The particular kind of lawbreaking in which the District Attorney told his ministerial congregation their profession indulged is marrying persons under the legal age and couples when one or both of the parties is, for physical or other reasons, unfit for marriage. He cited instances of the looseness with which ministers minis-ters perform marriages; giving a case that occurred j not long ago in the East, when a negro, having a legal wife living, took a young white girl in. short f skirts for a rideand drove to the house of a minister,, minis-ter,, who united them in marriage, the frantic mother being unable to locate the couple that night and prevent the defilement of her child. Another case he cited was one in which a young man, while on a spree, took an inmate of a disorderly house to the home of a minister, by whom they were married, although both were so drunk that they did not know what had happened until they saw the wedding wed-ding notice in the paper two days later. Proof of |