to form temporary we will consider that demand but you must not call them marriages for though they may be the same to you they are fer wise to us ii as to the religious or christian view of the subject i test on the simple explicit of of as universally understood and regarded by the christian for eighteen centuries we know what hebrew roman laws and customs respecting the union were in christ s day we know that and his accepted a very different law � that of marriage but by death op by that crime which is death to all the of marriage we know that and catholic and literal and liberal with barely exceptions enough to prove the rule have understood the s doctrine of marriage throughout the christian centuries as i do to day that this christian doctrine of marriage is a chief reason for the moral intellectual and even material of europe over asia in our day i do most firmly believe you will regard it as you think fit and as to moses and his law with all you have to say of them all the answer that seems to me needed is contained in the few words of on that very point moses for the hardness of your hearts permitted easy divorce but from the beginning it was not so iii i have said that the divine end of marriage is the and increase of the human race by that i abide of course i did not say that marriage has no other end than this so au your criticism seems to me i do not urge that in a true union everything else but the production and of children must be ignored i do insist that there must be nothing or inconsistent with this if required to say whether the union of this man with this woman is true noble and honorable or selfish and i must ask would they gladly have children bom of it would they proudly acknowledge those children before the world and undertake to fulfil toward them all the duties of parents marriage and divorce b k not their though impelled by admiration and by a flood of passion is shameful and the union which the immediate parties prefer should be has no ri t to be at all i was shocked when i heard an of your say some years since we hold that the parents are not to be sa to the children i hold on the contrary that the lives of true parents are with acts of self sacrifice for their children � that their lives have been well spent who have given to the world nobler than themselves and while i admit that the conduct of a husband may be so outrageous so brutal as to justify the innocent wife in requiring a separation i insist that one who truly the nature and purposes of marriage wiu seek to marry another while the father of her children is still living i do not think she could look those children in the eye with all a mother s conscious purity and dignity while that their father and her husband both living were men do i feel that she could be to them all that a mother should be under such conditions iv the vice of our age the main source of its is a morbid which the social necessities in its mad pursuit of individual personal ends your fling at that called society is directly in point you are concerned chiefly for those who having married unfortunately if not seek relief from their bonds i am anxious rather to prevent or at least to render and unfit hereafter the miseries of the maybe deplorable but to make divorce easy is in effect to invite the and selfish to profane the of marriage whenever appetite and temptation may f here are a man and a woman who know absolutely nothing of each other but that they are pleased with each other s appearance and think marriage would to their mutual enjoyment � so they form a next year � perhaps next month � they have tired of each other � discovered of temper � quarrelled � in short they hate each other as they very well may so they are and ready to marry again that under the liberty of divorce by which was and ultimately ruined a woman had eight husbands within five years me whenever you shall have succeeded in our word marriage as a fig leaf for this sort of thing you will cause us to invent or appropriate some other term to what we mean by marriage and then you will very soon drop your own and come ours again so please leave us what belongs to us and choose a new term for your arrangement now it is very hard said a to the judge who him that i should be so severely punished for merely stealing a horse man replied the judge you are not so punished for merely stealing a horse but that horses may not he stolen the distinction seems to me clear and vital the wedded in soul may know each other if they will it is impossible that others should certainly know them to those who are thus wedded the to take each other for better for worse and to live together till death do part has no terrors they enter upon it without hesitation and fulfil its conditions without regret but to the the the selfish of personal and present enjoyment at whatever cost to others the of marriage is an obstacle a restraint a terror and god forbid that it should ever cease to be thousands would take a wife as readily as as as they don a new coat or sport a new if it were understood that they might themselves whenever or disgust or mutual dislike should prompt to that step but 