Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-03-18
A FAMILY SKELETON.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE breaches ON
UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.

Lax Divorce Laws Due Primarily to Ere.
Love Agitation, Mormonism and I'm
healthy Fiction-Hasty and Ill Consider
ed Matches Are Becoming Too Numerous
NEW YORK, March 17.-Rev. DIR.
Talmage chose as the subject of his aft
ernoon sermon in the Academy of Music
today topic of national interest-viz,
wholesale Divorce. :" The great audi
,ence repeatedly showed it's appreciation
of the sentiments expressed by the rev
erend speaker, and his sturdy blows in
behalf of the protection of the houa3-
hold and against the dissoluteness of
Imodern society were received with
marked appreciation. The text selected
was Matthew xix, g., "What, therefore,
God hath Joined together let not man
put asunder. "
That there are hundreds and thou
sands of infelicitous homes i'll America
no one will doubt. If there were only
lone skeleton in the closet, that might
be locked up and abandoned, but in
many home there is skeleton in the
hallway and skeleton in all the apart
ments.
"Unhappily married. are two words
descriptive of many a HON estead. 1t
needs no orthodox minister TO prove to
la badly mated pair that there is hell
They are there now. Sometimes grand
land gracious woman will be thus incar-
icerated, and her life will be a crucif1x-
ion, as was the case with Mrs. Sigour-
iney, the great poetess and the great soul
Sometimes a cOnsecrated man will be
united to fury, as was John Wesley,
ior united to vixen, as was John Mil
ton. Sometimes, and generally, both
iparties are to blame, and Thomas Car
lyle was an intolerable scold. and his
wife smoked and swore, and Froude,
1.-THE historian, pulled aside the curtain
from the lifelong squabble at Craigen-
fputtock and Five, Cheyne Row.
Some say that for the alienation Of
;alI these domestic disorders of which we
hear easy divorce is a good prescrip-
ltion. God sometimes authorizes divorce
as certainly as he authorizes marriage.
I have just as much regard for one law
fully divorced as I have for one lawful
! ~ married. But you know and know
THAT wholesale divorce is one of our ma
itional scourges. I am not surprised at
this when | think of the influences
(which have been abroad initiating
against the marriage relation.
4 Pernicious Doctrine.
! For many years the platforms Of the
fcOuntry rang with talk about a free love
millennium. There were meetings of this
kind held in the Cooper institute, New
York; fremont temple, Boston, and all
%loOI oY,1 -
were most prominent in that movement
have since been distinguished for great
spromiscuosity Of affection. Popular
themes for such occasions were the tyr
amy of man, the oppression of the
marriage relation, women's rights and
1.-THE affinities. Prominent speakers were
women with short curls and short dress,
Iand very long tongue, everlastingiy at
iwa1 with God because they were Gre
| ated women, while Oh the platform sat
meek men with soft accent and cOwed
ldemeanor, apologize for masculinity,
land holding the parasols while the ter
,magant orators went on preaching the
doctrine of free love.
| That campaign of about 20 years set
more devils into the marriage relation
than will be exercised in the next so.
F.. Men and women went home from such
meetings SO permanently confused as to
who We're their wives and husbands that
they never got out of their perpleXity,
and the criminal and the civil courts
tried to disentangle the ''Iliad'' of woes,
and this one got alimony, and that one
igot limited divorce, and this mother
kept the children on condition that the
father could sometimes come and look
fat them, and these went into poorhouses,
and those went into an insane asylum,
land those went into dissolute public
life, and all went to destruction. The
fmightiest war ever made against the
marriage institution was that free love
campaign, sometimes under one name
land sometimes under another.
, Brazen Polygamy.
A.. Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been po-
ilygamy in Utah. That was stereotyped
tcaricature of the marriage relation and
has poisoned the whole land. You might
as we'll think that you can have an arm
| in a state of modification and yet the
whole body not be sickened as to have
these territories polygamized and yet the
body of the nation not feel the putrefac-
ition. Hear it, good men and women of
America, that SO long ago as 1862 law
twas passed by congress forbidding po-
/ lygamy in the territories and in all the
Splaces where they had jurisdiction.
iTwenty-four years passed along and five
administrations before the first brick
was knocked from that fortress of liber-
Itinism.
Every new DrfSident in his inauoura1
ltickled that monster with the straw Of
condemnation, and every congress stul-
Titled itself in proposing some plan that
lwould not work. Polygamy stood more
lintrenched, and more brazen, and more