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Show JUDGE GOODWIN ON DIVORCE. i If there be any one tiling more than another which we admire in the. character of the robust odi- j i lor of the Evening Telegram it is his practical com- j mon sense. 3 1 is rapier is always clean and bright, i and his thrusts delivered in defense of decency and i !. clean living. Here is what he has to say on '"One J Cause of Divorce' in Monday's Telegram: j "Several scores of divorces are granted in our j city courts every month. In Almost even- cae the ' divorce is sought by wives, and the usual charge is j desertion and failure to provide.- Most of those i t applicants are women wi1 limit mean, risen we read the evils of divorce. Is not the real evil with most case? away back of the divone? liow many of these women vere ever fitted to lie wives j How many of them, prior to marriage, though knowing ; they were going to marry men of moderate means, j most of them working for a small salary, knew the I ; first thing about housekeeping or how to prepare the , s-implcst kind of a meal : When they married, what did they propose to add to the order, stability and comfort of the family '. Ir is almost impossible to 1" obtain help in the homes of the citv, and when young women engage their services, in three cases j j out of five they know almost absolutely nothing of l ' 1lie duties that are supposed to attach to their sta- f tions as simple cooks and housekeepers. "Still, there is not one of them who would not Trith half n chance pet married. What can such a j oman offer in exchange for a home? 1 it auy I . wonder that in a few months they charge desertion I find failure to support i I : "'We are very proud of our public and private - schools. Is not. a school where the simpler domestic j ; accomplishments are taught more essential than f ; all ourdioasted schools" ) Judge, outside of the Catholic church there is ! " marriage, for, in a legal and Protestant sense, ' I marriage is but a civil or dual contract. Tom j J Jones, Bill Sykcs. Dick Wells and sixty-one others If constituting what is familiarly known as our state j . government lay down the law dealing with marriage ' nd its dissolution. "These be thy Gods. O Israel." 1 these gods tell the young man and woman who j vnsh to mate, or pair that after they have cxperi- j I j iijcjiicu wiiu maieing ana want variety that is a I I change, there are eight statutory reasons by which 1nev may obtain the change. You see. Judge, this I : fi0rt f a marriage i pagan, not Christian. It is : leading up to promiscuity; you understand us. .1 - Judge? In the expressive phraseology of the pro- I fessional oarsman, "We are getting there."' j A Christian marriage is a contract raised liy the Son of God. our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to j ; rho Jipnity of a sacrament: that is, a something hv. end what St. Paul calis a '"Great mystery" and which he compares to the union of Jesus Christ 1 with his church. As a contract, marriage is a law- l fl marital union between a man and a woman: as I a sacrament, marriage confers grace, sanctifying the legitimate union of a man and a woman and ; obliging them to life-long participation in each ; other's society "until death do us part." The in dissolubility, that is the life-long binding nature of this sacramental contract, was foreshown in Gene sis jj. '.j--4. anJ ratified by Jesus Christ our Lord i ; ullfin 'he "Pharisees came to him, tempting him, j f and Is it lawful for a man to put away his j i wife for any cause?" And he answered and said j to lhen'- "Have .v? not read that God, -who made j raan 111 tfce beginning, made them male and female? f Yor tliis cause shall a man leave father and mother, find shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be in one flh- Wherefore, what God hath joined to- gether let no man put asunder. And I say to you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for I fornication, and shall marry another eommitteth J adultery; and he who shall marry her that is put eommitteth adultery." Chap. xi.., 3. j .- You me if this law of Christ is binding on the consciences of the ministers who marry divorced , people, on the members of our state government. . on the divorced people themselves f; Certainly not . This law binds only the Christian and the Jew, not j the heathen and the pagan. j Why, then, do some professing Christians di-j di-j vorce their wives and wives husbands, i We can only answer in the words of our Lord to j the Pharisees: "Did not Moses give you the law, J and none of you keepeth the law." Apart from the moral aspect of the case there J are other considerations which affect society. The breaking up of the home and severing of family relations re-lations are the greatest evils of modern society for the family, not the individual, is the social unit, j As society is simply the offspring of the family, so is the family begotten of marriage, which is a sacrament. sac-rament. The state, in assuming jurisdiction over it, makes marriage a civil contract, and. like all such contracts, subject to the civil law which defines de-fines the conditions under which the contracting j parties may or may not become husband and wife, j What the legislators enact they can also repeal. If they can enact laws defining the conditions under which a marriage may be legally contracted, they can also do the same defining the conditions under which it mav be dissolved. This takes awav from the marriage tie its sacred character., and makes the promise, "until death do us part," a mere mockery. mock-ery. This undermining of the Christian family i? the death warrant of Christian society. Husband, wife and children make up the family, but where the sacramental character of marriage is ignored, and a divorce easily obtained, children are inconvenient. Hence, to prepare for future ' emergency in the divorce court, race suicide is carried car-ried out to an alarming extent. The dark cloud hanging in the horizon of the divorce court smothers smoth-ers all maternal instinct and leads to the greatest of crimes, namely, foeticide. To remedy tjicse evils the state is impotent; that is, it. cannot enact laws to preserve and perpetuate the family, upon which the state itself must depend for its future existence. exist-ence. The decay or corruption of the family always al-ways meant the ruin of society. Renowned nations of antiquity lot their prestige and greatness when the family died out. In our age and country the i family is dying out to an appalling extent, owing j to the mad rush for wealth and the deccp of re- j ligfon. which no longer restrains the passions. What j will be the consequences History repents itself. As nations reached the summit of their greatness and renown through the Christian marriage law. which preserved the family by proclaiming the sanctity, j unity and indissolubility of marriage, so. too, will j a total disregard for the sacredness of the nuptial j tie sound iW: death knell of the family, the disrup- lion of society and a return to heathen practices. ! i |