and poverty a sort of dishonourable punishment. It is constrained and punctilious in righteousness, it regards a married and industrious life as typically godly, and there is a sacredness to it, as of a vacant Sabbath, in the unoccupied higher places which such an existence leaves for the soul. It is sentimental, its ritual is meagre and unctuous, it expects no miracles, it thinks optimism akin to piety, and regards profitable enterprise and practical ambition as a sort of moral vocation. Its Evangelicalism lacks the notes, so prominent in the gospel, of disillusion, humility, and speculative detachment. Its benevolence is optimistic and aims at raising men to a conventional well-being; it thus misses the inner appeal of Christian charity which, being merely remedial in physical matters, begins by renunciation and looks to spiritual freedom and peace.

The Mind of Christ Concerning

Marriage'

REV. WALKER GWYNNE, D.D.,

General Secretary of The Association for the Sanctity of

T

Marriage.

1. The Greatness of the Problem.

HERE is no more momentous social, religious, or political question facing the people of America today than that of marriage and divorce. History tells us in unmistakable language that when the family is destroyed the destruction of the nation follows inevitably. In the year 1916, according to the latest official report, there were no less than 112,036 divorces in the United States, and the increase every five years is 30 per cent.

For Christian people, who are the bondservants of Christ, and therefore His true freemen, there can be only one supreme law of marriage as of all else in life, namely, the mind and will of their divine Master. That is an axiom that needs no argument. The one question, then, which this paper has to deal with is, What is the mind of Christ concerning marriage? If that can be conclusively answered, then for us who believe in Him as God Incarnate, the cause is forever settled. No matter what those who are not Christians may think, or civil legislatures and law courts may do, or the man in the street may say, for us there

1The first of a series of papers to be issued by the Association for the Sanctity of Marriage, under the editorship of the Publication Committee, consisting of the Right Rev. the Bishops of Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, the Rev. F. B. Reazor, D.D., Rector of St. Mark's Church, West Orange, N. J., and the Rev. Walker Gwynne, D.D., Rector Emeritus of Calvary Church, Summit, N. J.

is but one line of duty. Christ has spoken. The case is ended.

And the search for the mind of Christ concerning marriage is neither obscure nor difficult. It is not a question to be made only by deeply learned theologians. Everyone that runneth may read. In the New Testament our Lord has expressed His mind so plainly that there can be no mistaking His words.

More than once our Lord proclaimed His will uncompromisingly in the face of hostile Jews whose rulers had reduced the primal law of marriage to the level of mere concubinage. The effort of Moses in dealing with the question is the first of which we have any record in history, but it was rather in the way of restriction of inevitable evils, "because of the hardness of their hearts," than of a return to first principles. Moses dealt with divorce as he did with slavery and polygamy, as an accommodation to men's weakBut scribes and Pharisees, like their modern representatives, the divorce lawyers, found or made plenty of additional loopholes whereby, fifteen hundred years later, they obtained for their clients divorces "for every cause" (St. Matt. xix. 3).

It was then in view of this condition that we find our Lord restating the law of God "as it was from the beginning of the creation." That this teaching was absolute and unqualified by any exception, and spoken in the face of bitter enemies, whose hostility might have been softened by even one exception, is the testimony of three witnesses.

2. The Witness of St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. Paul.

In St. Mark, the earliest of all the Evangelists, we have this record: "There came unto Him Pharisees, and asked

Him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting Him. And He answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said 'Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and put her away. But Jesus said unto them, For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of the creation male and female made He them. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and the twain shall become one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house the disciples asked Him again of this matter. And He saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her; and if she herself shall put away her husband, and marry another, she committeth adultery." (St. Mark x. 2-12, Rev. Version here and in all other quotations.)

St. Luke's testimony is exactly to the same effect. Here again He is addressing Pharisees, and we have the same stern unqualified statement, "Everyone that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another committeth adultery, and he that marrieth her that is put away from a husband committeth adultery" (St. Luke xvi. 18).

And when we turn to the teaching of those disciples whom Christ sent forth to proclaim His Gospel in the whole world, and to establish His Church, we find no shrinking from this lofty and severe doctrine concerning marriage. It was not now with the low practices of their fellow countrymen they had to deal. They were face to face with, if possible, the lower practice of the great pagan world of Greeks and Romans.

St. Paul was not one of the original Apostles who heard Christ's teaching from His own lips on earth. His knowl

edge of the Gospel was not received from others who were Christians before him, but directly "through revelation of Jesus Christ," as he himself tells us (Gal. i. 11, 12; Eph. iii. 3; 1 Cor. xi. 23). And so it happens, when the Apostle has to deal with this fundamental question of marriage we find him proclaiming the same high doctrine that other disciples had heard from His lips on earth.

To his converts in Corinth he writes: "Unto the married I give charge, yea not I [alone, though guided by the Holy Spirit], but the Lord [Jesus Himself], That the wife depart not from her husband (but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife .... And so ordain I in all the Churches" (1 Cor. vii. 10, 11, 17).

To the Christians in Rome he writes: "The woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth... So then if, while the husband liveth she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress" (Rom. vii. 2, 3).

To the members of the Church in Ephesus he writes (Eph. v. 22 to end), glorifying the relationship of husbands to their wives, as his Lord had done, by comparing it with that spiritual union of Christ with His Bride, the Church, than which nothing can be closer or more holy: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for it; that He might sanctify it... Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. . . . even as Christ also [loves] the Church, because we are members of His body." Then he repeats Christ's republication of the primal law, "For this cause shall a man

leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh."