Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1877-11-04
SUNDAY READING.

parties chiefly concerned in the dissolution of
the marriage tie was one subject of earnest
consideration at the late Episcopal Convention
in Boston The Board of Delegates passed
the following proposed sections relating to the
canon on marriage and divorce, and the same
is now before the House of Bishops:
SECTION l. If any persons be joined to-
gether otherwise than as Gods word doth al
low, their marriage is not lawful.
SEC. 2. No minister shall solemnlze the
marriage of any person who has divorced
husband or wife still living, if such husband
or wife has been put away for any cause arts
ing after marriage; but this canon shall not
be held to apply to the innocent In divorce
for the cause of adultery, or to parties once
divorced seeking to be united again.
After criticising the rather doubtful phrase
ology of the foregoing and calling attention to
the uncertain character of some of it's provis-
ions, one of our secular contemporaries re-
marks, quite practically as follows: "We are
Inclined to think upon the whole that it would
be an improvement upon our system, if the
power to solemnize marriages as civil contracts
were taken from the clergy of all denomina-
tons, and the civil contract were required to
be entered into before magistrate, the reig
ious part of the ceremony to be regulated by
each Church or denomination as it might
think fit This is the practice in most Roman
Catholic countries and it has this advantage,
that it recognizes the civil relation of marriage
as something distinct from a religious cere-
mony ,ewhile it leaves the parties whose con-
sciences oblige them to regard religious sane
ton necessary part of marriage, to seek
that sanction according to their religious be
lief. Some persous would object that to the
vulgar and ignorant it is well to unite the
civil and the religious ceremony, by giving
the priest or minister power to perform and
attest both. But we believe the fact to be,
in general, that large part of the public at
tach very little Importance to the religious
ceremony and we are quite sure that parties
who have any sense of religion at all would be
quite as likely to wish to add the religious
sanction to the civil contract, if the two cere-
monies were separated, as they are where
they are performed by the same functionary."
...... 1t is well that we do now and then in |
THAT much abused and little understood pub
lie teacher, and get ourselves reminded of
what was the method and drift of his thoughts.
Mark how wildly he presents the vast mai |
esty and grandeur of the Deity. We quote
from his sermon on Communion with God :
''God must be omnipresent in space. There
can be no mote that peoples the sunbeams,
no spot on an insects wing, no little cell of
life which the microscope discovers in the
seed-sporule of moss, and brings to light,
but God is there, in the mote that peoples the
sunbeams, in the spot on the insects wing, in
that cell of life the microscope discovers in the
seed-sporule of a moss God must be also
omnip present in time. There is no second of
time elapsing now, there has been done mil
lions of years ago, before the oldest stars be-
gan to burn, but God was in that second of
time. Follow the eye of the great space
penetrating telescope into the vast halls of
creation, to the furthest nebulous spot seen in
Orion's beta spot whose bigness no natural
mind can adequately conceive-and God is
there. Follow the eye of the great sharply
defining microscope at Berlin into some cor
ner of creation, to that little dot, one of many
millions that people an inch of stone, once
animate with swarming life, spot too small
for mortal mind adequately conceive,-and +
God is there Get you a metaphysic micro r
scope of time to divide second into its bill 6
lionth part; God is in that. Get you meta 7
physic telescope of time, to go back in millen- q
NUNS as the glass in miles, and multiply the y
duration of a solar system by itself to get an h
of time, still God is there, in each /
elapsing second of that millennial stream of J.
;, His Here contermnous with the .
Ill of space, his Now coeval with the all of l.
lime. Through all this space, in all this time, i
His being extends, spreads undivided, oper-
ties unspent )" God in all his infnity,-per-
ectly powerful, perfectly wise, perfectly just, ?
perfectly loving and holy, His being is an e
infinite activity, a creating, and so giving of II
Himself to the world. The worlds being is a u
being created and continued &c
This is so in the nebula of Orions belt. and II
n the seed-sporule of the smallest moss. 1t Il
SO now, and was the same millions of mil
enniums ago. All this is philosophy, the I'M I
voidable conclusion of the human mind It w
not the opinion of Celeridge and Kant, but di