The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-10-12 00:00:00

THE MARRIAGE LAW AS AFFECTING

THE CHURCH.

At the Church Congress, held at Sheffield last week,
the above subject was discussed—Archdeacon Potter
presiding. The Rev. Canon Temple read the first
paper. It could not, he said, be too strongly urged
that the essence of marriage lay in mutual consent to
a permanent life-long bond. In a simple state of
society, when such consent had been once freely given
by persons capable of 'giving and acting on it, no one
would dare to say such a marriage was invalid. Still,
when Christianity was reached, and civilisation known,
the chairman had a right to say that human assent,
apart from the blessing of God on his own ordinance,
was an impious thing, and the statesman had a right to
say that the acceptance of a simple agreement was den-
gerous to the interests of society. It was right, there-
fore, that the rights of the married should be guarded by
the same considerations of religion as we submitted to
voluntarily and the same restraints of law as prevailed
in matters affecting property and the general conduct of
human affairs. At the same time, a wise Churchman
would admit that a marriage contract without the bless-
ing of God, conveyed in an authorized administration,
though an irreligious and too possibly a sinful mar-
riage, was not an invalid one, and a wise statesman
would take care that legal formalities with which
he surrounded the matrimonial bond were as few
and simple as possible. These last should be directed
to two subjects only—the preventing of marriage
between persons who might be unfit for any reason
to contract it and to the requirement of such formal
evidence as would abundantly secure that all persons,
men and women, should be distinctly known among
their friends and associates according to the truth of
the case as either married or not married. What was
most striking on this subject was the utter absence
of anything like uniformity in the law of marriage in
the United Kingdom. In Ireland there were
.no
fewer than seven different methods of constructing
marriage, each one guarded legidation ef a severely
deterrent character. In Scotland the old canon law
of Europe had found refuge, the marriages there being
regular. The irregular 118 compared with the regular
was very insignificant, being somewhere about one in
a thousand. Marriage in Scotland was to a certain
extent free from the gross scandal which obtained in
England in not permitting the intermarriage of
persons declared by the sebtence of a divorce
court to have been guilty of adultery. He felt bound
to say the present state of the law of England which,
in defiance, as he believed, both of Holy Scripture
and of Church authority, permitted divorced persons
to be married again in the lifetime of their lawful
partners, was most painful; and its so-called conces-
sion to the clerical conscience in not requiring any
clergyman to marry such persons himself, but causing
him in case of refusal to grant the use of the parish
church to another for the purpose was still more pain-
ful, as seeming to suggest that the law of man might
reasonably stand in opposition to the law of God and
claim the sanction of God's Church in doing so. He
would suggest public banns as at present; net, licenses
as at present requiring consent for minors- that in
case of banns or license 21 days' notice should be re-
quired of all particulars as to age, residence, &c. ; next,
let the parties have the license or certificate endorsed by
the clergyman of his or her parish ad dressed to the clergy-
man of the parish in which they desired to be married ;
next, that fees should be placed on a uniform scale
in all parishes, and that the penalties of perjury should
attach to all false declarations; next, that Scotch
irregular marriages should be abolished, and a uniform
limit of hours should be established within which all
marriages in the three kingdoms must be solemnized;
further, that the marriage in church of divorced per-
sons in the lifetime of those to whom they had once
been lawfully married 3hould be abolished. ( Applause.)
If the State thought such unions right let them be
made in secular buildings in the presence of civil
officers. A clear distinction, should, however, be
made between divorce and nullity of marriage. Lastly,
that the system of registration now used in England
should be adhered to and extended to Scotland and
Ireland.

Mr. Theodore Dodd read a paper on the same sub-
ject. He recommended that marriage should be
rendered a cheaper ceremony, and the marriage laws
simplified in accordance with the dictates of common
sense; and as common sense in England, Scotland,
and Ireland was pretty much alike, it followed that
the marriage laws should be rendered more uniform,
and consequently more satisfactory.
The Dean of Manchester, in opening the discussion,
observed that the Church would always take a deep
interest in the subject of marriage, and he hoped the
day would never come when marriage would cease to
be a religious ceremony, a contract to redeem a con-
tract to receive God's blessing. The question what
constituted the contract before the blessing
.was given
was one whioh might well be left to civilians and
churchman to debate together and settle. Then
there was the question for the Legislature as to
the diversity of the existing marriage laws. He
held, too, and strongly, that the law 'which allowed
parties divorced on account of adultery to marry
again in the lifetime of the persons to whom they had
been united, and that, too, in the Church, should be
repealed. (Applause.) It was scandalous that the
blessing of the Church should be required by law to be
given on such a marriage, one which was forbidden by
the Word of God, and that not by the Jewish law but
by the words of our Lord himself. Surely there ought
to be a consent between the law of the realm and the
law of God. (Applause.)
The Rev. G. Sandford also advocated an alteration
in the law in the direction indicated.
Bisnop Ryan spoke of the intense necessity that
existed for a revision of the marriage law of the
Church, and not only in the United Kingdom, but in
the Channel Islands and some of our Colonies,
especially alluding to the Crown Colony of Mauritius.
The marriage laws, as they now existed, affected the
Church most painfully and injuriously.
Mr. Beresford Hope, M.P., feared that a civil con-
tract preceding a religious ceremony would be re-
garded by the poor as an order from above not to go to
church, and that would be a very mischievous thing for
the Church. The Registry Office Act worked that
way, but for that there was a civil necessity, but the
adoption of the suggestion to which he had referred
had no such necessity to justify it. (Hear, hear.)
Other speakers took part in the discussion.