St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-04-25
EASY DIVORCE.
Increasing EUiLs of The System What So
osot,, gTocf Eerds

increasing EciLs Of The System hdt So
ciety Host Needs.
DR.. TaImadge preached in the Brooklyn
Tabernacle, Sunday April Goth. On the sub
ject easy Divorce" Before the sermon h
read and expounded the scriptural passage il
regard to the burial of Sara in the cave O
Macphelah One of the hymns was sung t.
the tune of "Home, Sweet Home.u DR.
Talmadge's text was Matt. xrx-6: "What
therefore God hath joined together let nc
man put asunder.'
That there are in America, to day, said he
hundreds and thousands of infelicitous
homes no one will doubt. If there were
skeleton in only one closet that might be
locked up and abandoned, but in many 8
home there is a skeleton for every closet
"Unhappily marred'' are two words which
Tell all the domestic history. You need nc
orthodox minister to prove to a badly mated
pair that there is a hell; they are there now,
thousands of good and gracious women are
thus incarcerate, and their life is cruciix-
lon, while many good man, like John Wes-
ley, has married vixen or fiend. Oftener
both parties are to blame, and Thomas Car
smokes and swears, and Froude, the histor-
iah is mean enough for the shekels he gets
for the manuscript to withdraw the curtain
that hid the life long squabble at Cheyne
Row and Craigen Puttock. For the relief Of
all such homes it is proposed to disband the
domestic partnership. Make divorce easy.
When husband and wife find themselves al
fba 4uDo Of he n
reassortment of spirits.
Now, for certain causes, divorce is as
right as marriages, and 1 have as much re
gard for one lawfully divorced as for one law
fully married. God authorizes one as GER
tainly as he authorizes the other But whole
sale divorce isone Of the national scourges, u
FREE LOVE AND ITS ADVOCATES.
And it is no surprise to me when I see
what have been the influence at work to dis
parage that divine and glorious institution
We had for long time while lecture plat
forms resounding with the talk of free love
millennium. Meetings in Academy of Music,
Brooklyn, and Cooper Institute, New York
and fremont Temple, Boston, and all over
the land. The stage occupied by women,
for their promiscuity of affection. Among
their favorite themes were, "The "Tyranny
Of Man." ''The Oppression of the Marriage
RelatiOns'' 'WSman's Rights, Affinity, :"
the chief spirits eff such meetings were wom-
en- with short hair and short dress,
but long tongues everlastingly at war with
God and society because they were created
women, while a few men with soft accent and
cOwed demeanOr and apologize
for their masculinity sat here and
there on the platform and held the, parasols
of the termagant orators as they went on
preaching the gospel Of free love. Those
frantics, rampant for twenty years on the
platform, sent more devils into domestic life
than can be exercised for the next century.
Men and women went home from such
meetings to be permanently confused about
their wives and husbands that they never got
over the perpleXity and the civil and Grim
inal courts were called in to help disentan
gle the trouble and this one paid an alimo-
ny and the other got a limited divorce and
the father took the children on condition that
the mother could see them once in a while !;
and some of the contestants went into the
grave and some into the penitentiary and
some into public dissoluteness and all into
Wretchedness.
oEMoRALIzING BOOKS AND THEIR INFLUENCE.
Another influence that has done much to
demoralize the marriage relation has been
the postulous literature that fills the country
millions Of sheets of it abroad every week,
choked with stories of domestic wrongs, in
facilities, stratagems, murders, until it is a
wonder that there is any common sense or
decency left on the subject of the marriage
relation.
Now for the correction of all these abuses
it is seriously proposed that divorce be made
more easy. Before [ yield to that cry want
to know how easy it is now. [ have looked
over the law of all the states, and though
easier in some states than in others, it is
easy everywhere. In order that it may be
perfectly easy in Illinois after mentioning a
long list of causes for which divorce may be
granted, that state in her law says that the
court may decree a divorce on other grounds
if satisfied of the expediency of so doing
You wonder that in Cook county of that
state in 1850, there were eight hundred and
thirty divorce suits begun! To show how
easy it is [ have to tell you that in Massa-
chusetts six hundred divorces were gran ted
in one year, in Maine four hundred and
seventy-eight in Connecticut four hundred
and one. In the one city of San Francisco
they had theee hundred and thirty three di-
vorces in 1880, in New England in one year
two thousand one hundred and thirteen, but
in twenty years in New England twenty thou
sand. At the rate at which causes for d.
vorces are multiplied and the number of cas-
es increases we are not far off from the time
when the courts viii set apart whole days for
applications and all that will be necessary to
prove against the man will be that he has
left his evening newspaper on the middle of
the floor and against a woman that an over
coat was found buttonless. Within a few
years divorces have doubled in France, Eng
land and the United States. In Western
Reserve, Ohio, the divorces as compared
with the number Of marriages are one to
eleven in Rhode Island one to twelve, in
Vermont one to fourteen. Is not that easy
enough! Mark this: In all the history of the
world theifrequency of divorce is always a
sign of the dissouteness of society. For the
first five hundred years of Rome only one di-
vorce-years of her glory and virtue. But
the reign of vice began and with it divorce
became epidemic and if you want to know
how fast the empire went down ask Gibbon
Do you know how the reign of terror was
ushered into France. By twenty thousand
divorces in Paris in one year.
WHAT SOCIETY NEEDS
What society needs most now is to make
divorce more and more difficult. Men and
women must understand that if they go into
the marriage relation there is no prospect of
escape except through the door of the sepul-
chre. What will make the human race pause
on the verge of this relation until they are
satisfied that it is the safest and wisest and
IN HO of will ~
marriage in fun. That will take out of the
relation all idea that it is merely a trial trip,
and that if they don't like it they can get out
at the next landing. That viii take marriage
out of the realm of the frivolous into the
realrn of the from enllnnS and the flnWnrs in